1001 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 28, 2009 Tuesday
Dangerously obsessed with celebrities
BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 912 words
HIGHLIGHT: By making fashion models into role models and singers into saints, we
have created a shallow and vain society. NO HOLDS BARRED. The writer's upcoming
book is The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing Spiritual
Hunger. He is the founder of This World: The Values Network. www.shmuley.com
Our very civilization is threatened by the cult of celebrity and the fact that
mere entertainers have become our heroes. There is no precedent in any
civilization for actors, singers, dancers and directors being elevated to the
highest positions of prominence. That's why none of us can name actors and
actresses from ancient Greece or Rome. Sure, we can name playwrights and
satirists. We can name the politicians, the philosophers and the generals. But
not those who provided light-hearted merriment.
In our time the incredible has happened. The court jester has become the king.
Those who play the heroes have become our heroes. Those who direct movies are
directing the aspirations of our youth.
In America today there exists not a single mainstream televised awards ceremony
for anything other than movies, television, acting, modeling and music. Even
when brave soldiers are awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry, it is not
broadcast. When the president awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to our
leading thinkers, writers and civil servants, it is watched by about 10 people
on C-Span. But awards for Best Actor and Best Actress are followed closely by
hundreds of millions. That's a major change for a country whose only actor to
become an historical figure, prior to the Hollywood era, was John Wilkes Booth.
The consequences of elevating people who perform inconsequential tasks to the
center of national attention are far-reaching. By making fashion models into
role models and singers into saints, we have created a shallow and vain society
distinguished not by sacrifice, but by indulgence, not by the gift of enduring
love but by the glitter of transient attention. We have created a culture known
not for virtue, but vanity. And our country is becoming not more dedicated, but
more decadent.
American kids today, for the most part, don't wish to be doctors, but directors.
Not rabbis but rockers. Not soldiers but superstars. And we wonder as to the
causes of American narcissism.
To gauge the effect of entertainers at the epicenter of national consciousness,
just imagine if entertainment, rather than scholarship, were the foremost
preoccupation of a medical student. Instead of working at a library and
attending lectures eight hours a day, our student would watch eight hours of TV
and DVDs. Would you trust him with your kidney?
The future of the US is threatened not by any foreign power but by collapse from
within. Our foundations could become so eroded, our pillars so brittle, that our
national edifice will fall - victim to the forces of historical inevitability.
If our nation is built on the marvelous marble of the Greek Parthenon or the
Roman Pantheon, or the solid stone of Jerusalem's Western Wall, it will last for
centuries, and perhaps millennia. But if it is built of the ersatz granite of a
Hollywood soundstage, all glitz and no substance, we risk witnessing it crumble
before our very eyes.
NO CULTURE that deifies human beings is ever healthy. It was not for naught that
God made the first two of His Ten Commandments the injunctions to accept only
one God and never to embrace counterfeits. God alone should be the epicenter of
our lives; we dare brook no substitutes.
In no area is this truer than in our fixation with the lives of movie and music
stars. Celebrity gossip has become the new social dialogue. Our hero worship has
gone from a venal pastime to a noxious veneration.
To be sure there are exceptions; some celebrities, like U2's Bono, have
completely leveraged their fame to highlight causes much more worthy than
themselves. Sadly, these few celebrities constitute the exceptions that prove
the rule.
Jews were brought into the world as witnesses to God's reality and role, and our
highest mission is to return Him to the center of human life, our long existence
amid pogroms and persecutions bearing witness to faith in God's presence even in
the darkest times. Our national calling is dedicated to a single proposition:
that man is created by a loving God to spread law and love. According to Jewish
tradition, this is the reason God hid Moses' burial place - to prevent his
possible deification and the transformation of his sepulcher into a shrine. To
be sure, Moses wrought wonders in Egypt, but he was merely a conduit of a higher
Light.
The glow of our favorite celebrity is a mere reflection of an infinite Radiance,
their rhythm just a hollow echo of an eternal Beat. Isaiah put it best: "Lift
your eyes heavenward, and see Who created all these."
In general there are two kinds of people, like there are two kinds of celestial
bodies - those that radiate light and those that merely reflect it. The irony of
Hollywood is that it calls celebrities "stars" when they are really "planets."
Lacking any inner luminescence, they become dependent on the spotlight. Soon
they become its prisoner and, bereft of a connection with the Source of all
light, they suffer the corrosive effects of celebrity sunburn, usually
manifested in material excess, deep loneliness and incurable unhappiness, which
explains the decline and fall of once-mighty stars like Elvis Presley, Marilyn
Monroe and Michael Jackson.
God promised Abraham that his children would be "like the stars of the heaven,"
not the stars of the silver screen. The stars of heaven give light in the night,
signifying the Bible's moral imperative. But movie stars are part of a
counterfeit constellation: artificially illuminated and set in a make-believe
sky.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Paris Hilton arrives at a screening of 'Paris, Not France' in
Los Angeles. 'The consequences of elevating people who perform inconsequential
tasks to the center of national attention are far-reaching.' (Credit: AP)
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1002 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 28, 2009 Tuesday
Letters
BYLINE: Martha Lev-Zion, Gershon Harris, Zev Chamudot, Rabbi Dr. Bernhard
Rosenberg, Leah Murray, Christopher Gunness, Conal Urquhart, Dr. Anthony Luder
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1201 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
About ethics...
Sir, - I was amazed to read "Haredi newspaper editor: US rabbis' arrest
motivated by anti-Semitism in FBI" (July 27). While some of us may not be
religious, we maintain our moral compass and do not riot, launder money or
accuse others of anti-Semitism when it is clear where the embarrassment lies.
How dare these so-called rabbis endanger us all because of their greed and lack
of ethics?
MARTHA LEV-ZION
Omer
...and morals
Sir, - "When righteous stumble" (Editorial, July 27) asked what can be done to
better stem the types of corruption that seem to have become all too prevalent
in the haredi and Orthodox Jewish world.
Two practical steps:
1. In the short term, rabbinical leaders must not only speak out much more
against specific cases of violence, corruption, etc., but also emphasize more
Jewish ethics (musar) in yeshivot, synagogues and other public venues.
The classical "musar" movement came about largely because of what leading rabbis
of the time saw as a frightening development: intellectual achievement via
intensive Torah study overriding many pious Jews' "fear of God," manifested in
blatant violations of ritual and ethical commandments.
2. Traditional rabbinical ordination demands intensive study of certain chapters
of the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) dealing with the ritual aspects of
kashrut, ritual slaughter, nonkosher animals, meat and milk, etc. Unfortunately,
however, the more "human" chapters, including the laws of charity, visiting the
sick, providing for the poor and conversion, while extremely important, are not
formal requirements for ordination in much of the Orthodox and haredi world even
today.
Perhaps it is time to make ordination conditional upon a candidate's knowing
Jewish ethics and morals no less than how to properly "kasher" a piece of meat.
GERSHON HARRIS
Hatzor Haglilit
What's the message?
Sir, - Your glaring headline "5 US rabbis nabbed in vast corruption scam" (July
24) must not only fill us with shame but with the painful acknowledgment that
God's name has been desecrated. However, one questions the propriety of the
actions described in the sub-headline: "FBI agents storm into New Jersey
synagogue during prayers." Could not these arrests have been made without vulgar
intrusion into a house of worship? Surely not all those whose prayers were
violently interrupted were criminals.
Two separate crimes seem to be involved - money- laundering and the sale of
organs - so why were the charges lumped together, giving the impression of some
overall conspiracy? Would official behavior have been so disrespectful had the
focus of attention been a church or mosque?
Since the FBI is a federal agency, is some message being sent to the Jewish
community by the federal government?
ZEV CHAMUDOT
Petah Tikva
Sir, - This latest corruption scandal in New Jersey should send a loud message
to all those who think it is good for Jews to vote in a bloc. I have repeatedly
warned the Jewish community that some political leader will use the community's
leadership to make deals which benefit both parties. This scandal gives
ammunition to anti-Semites who repeat Hitler's horrific statements about the
Jews and their control of world commerce and industry.
It is ironic that the news broke during the nine days, a time of mourning for
Jews worldwide because of the destruction of the Temple and other horrific
events.
Please note, it was a corrupt Jew who turned in the politicians and rabbis. Does
anyone truly believe that this scandal goes unnoticed among those who already
hate Jews with a passion?
RABBI DR. BERNHARD
ROSENBERG
New York
Land for...?
Sir, - Thank you for the excellent "How settlements became 'illegal'" (July 24).
Moshe Dann's important and informative review of the period in 1967 following
the attack on Israel by Syria, Egypt and Jordan should be required reading,
particularly by the representatives of the Obama administration who will soon
arrive to pressure our government yet again on the settlements in Judea and
Samaria.
To quote Mr. Dann: "Land for peace" in reality means "Land for terrorism."
LEAH MURRAY
Tel Aviv
UNRWA isn't complicit
Sir, - "Officials: Hamas tunneling near UN facilities" (July 27) clearly linked
Hamas and UNRWA by suggesting that there was a tunnel under an UNRWA school. Any
allegation that UNRWA is complicit in any militant or military activity is
completely false. The story also suggested that UNRWA is oblivious to what goes
on in its facilities. This is also patently incorrect.
The article cited the incident in 2007 when militants fired rockets from the
UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun. What it failed to report was that the area around
the school and the school itself had been turned into a battleground between
militants and the IDF. Because of this, UNRWA evacuated the school, including
the guard at the gate, leaving the school empty. It was at this point that
militants entered the school.
UNRWA condemns the firing of rockets into Israel just as it condemns military
activity by the IDF that endangers the lives of UNRWA students and teachers.
UNRWA takes all necessary measures to prevent militant or military activities in
its facilities. There have been incidents in the past when the IDF and militants
have entered our schools in Gaza and used them for military purposes. UNRWA
always protests these incidents to both the Israeli authorities and to the
authorities in Gaza.
CHRISTOPHER GUNNESS
UNRWA Spokesperson
Jerusalem
Hamas wasn't involved
Sir, - "Hamas may get its claws into Gaza reconstruction funds - Defense
Ministry" (July 24) stated that "Hamas has taken control of millions of dollars
transferred monthly by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad to the
The United Nations Development Program and designated for Gazans whose homes
were destroyed during Operation Cast Lead."
UNDP does not receive any monthly payment from the Palestinian Authority. It is
possible that your source is referring to a single sum of $21 million which was
distributed by UNDP on behalf of the Palestinian Authority earlier this year to
people whose homes were damaged in the recent violence. This money was
distributed via established banks to beneficiaries on the basis of a UNDP damage
assessment. Hamas had no involvement in the process.
CONAL URQUHART
Program of Assistance
to the Palestinian People
Jerusalem
Pediatricians alone
Sir, - Ruthie Blum Leibowitz repeated a mistake which has become almost
universal in recent days in the media ("Unorthodox coverage," July 24).
Munchausen by Proxy (MBP) is not a psychiatric diagnosis and does not appear in
the universally accepted catalogue of psychiatric diagnoses, the DSM-IV.
MBP was originally described in 1977 by a British pediatrician, Roy Meadow, and
it is a pediatric diagnosis of child abuse made by pediatricians alone.
Psychiatrists have no professional standing with regard to this diagnosis and
have no professional right or ability to either make or exclude the diagnosis.
The psychiatric state of the perpetrator of child abuse is another matter; but
the fact of, proof of and nature of abuse is a purely pediatric diagnosis, and
it is within this framework that MBP exists.
DR. ANTHONY LUDER
Head, Dept. of Pediatrics
Ziv Medical Center
Safed
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1003 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 28, 2009 Tuesday
American Jews: Stand up and be counted
BYLINE: ISI LEIBLER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1095 words
HIGHLIGHT: Nearly 80% of American Jews voted for Obama. That surely strengthens
their right to convey their concerns to the president. CANDIDLY SPEAKING
Ignore the soothing denials; the reality is that the crucial Israeli-US
relationship is at stake.
Over the years, American Jews have established remarkably sophisticated agencies
to advance the Jewish/Israeli cause. The pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, helped create
a bipartisan pro-Israel environment in Congress. American Jews (until recently)
had no qualms in criticizing their own government when they felt it was behaving
unjustly toward the Jewish state. Nor were they intimidated by accusations of
dual loyalties. Indeed, they took pride in contrasting their assertiveness to
that of European Jews, whom they frequently dismissed as "trembling Israelites."
Nevertheless, to this day American Jews cringe when they recall the behavior of
their forbears in the 1940s. Fearful of an anti-Semitic backlash and mesmerized
by the popularity and perceived moral infallibility of Franklin Roosevelt, the
Jewish establishment, to its eternal shame, remained silent when their president
refused to act on behalf of the doomed Jews of Europe.
However, in the post-war era, aside from Dwight Eisenhower's brutal threats in
the wake of the 1956 Suez Campaign and a few brushes with presidents George H.
W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, American-Jewish supporters of Israel were usually in
sync with the White House. They certainly never encountered anything comparable
to the confrontation looming with the Obama administration.
The current situation is especially sensitive because it is commonly believed
that Barack Obama's strategy relating to Israel is being orchestrated by two key
Jewish members of his administration, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod. Worse
still, they may have succeeded in dividing the Jewish leadership.
American-Jewish lay leaders are basically unknown to the general public.
The three principal agencies promoting Jewish interests to the public are
directed by civil servants - Malcolm Hoenlein of the Presidents' Conference, Abe
Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and David Harris of the American Jewish
Committee, all of whom are dedicated professionals.
THE ADMINISTRATION is now seeking to exploit the weakness of the lay leadership.
In line with established practice, as political tensions intensified, the
Presidents' Conference (representing 52 major Jewish organizations) requested a
meeting with the president. The White House agreed, but insisted on determining
who would participate. Without consultation, critics like Morton Klein of the
Zionist Organization of America were excluded while Israel-bashing groups like J
Street and US Peace Now were invited. The administration thus not only provided
equal status to fringe groups, it obliged mainstream organizations to share a
platform with groups whose raison d'tre is to force Israel to make additional
unilateral concessions. During Operation Cast Lead, J Street even publicly
condemned Israel's campaign against Hamas.
The reluctance of the Presidents' Conference to reject this arrangement may be a
major strategic blunder. It enables the White House to determine who represents
the Jewish community, and apply divide-and-conquer tactics against them. In
short, it provides a mechanism by which the Obama administration can create an
"amen" environment free of troublemakers.
AMERICAN JEWS face a watershed. Nearly 80 percent of them voted for Obama. That
surely strengthens their right to convey concerns to the president. However,
many of the lay leaders are wealthy philanthropists unaccustomed to political
confrontations. Moreover, fearful of jeopardizing donations from Obama acolytes,
organizations are reluctant to adopt controversial positions. This in turn makes
it extraordinarily difficult for Jewish civil servants to carry the brunt of
initiating opposition to a highly popular president.
That mainstream American-Jewish leaders lack a strategic plan at such a time is
disconcerting. At the meeting with Obama, most participants appear to have been
overwhelmed. Press reports suggest that most lay leaders remained silent, with
some even expressing support for Obama's policies. "It was a wonderful
exchange," gushed Andrea Weinstein, chair of the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs.
"I believe the president got the impression that there is broad support for his
policies and some difference on tactical levels... I am willing to give this
president an opportunity to try his strategy," proclaimed Conservative Rabbi
Steven Wernick. Reform leader Rabbi Eric Yoffie pointed out that "when it came
to substance, not a single participant told the president: 'You're wrong.'"
No one responded to Obama's outrageously patronizing remarks about the need for
Israelis to "engage in serious self-reflection." No one pointed out that it was
especially incongruous for the first African-American president to deny Jews the
right to take up residence in Jerusalem, the cradle of Jewish civilization.
Nobody suggested that by distancing the US from Israel, Obama was effectively
discouraging the Palestinians from making peace.
However there is a ray of light. The statement recently released by Alan Solow
and Malcolm Hoenlein, chairman and executive vice president of the Presidents'
Conference, condemning the administration for its heavy- handed treatment of
Israel in relation to Jerusalem may be significant. For Solow, until now a
dedicated Obama supporter who had originally requested the meeting with the
president, to publicly express such views may signal that Obama's negative
attacks on Israel are at last beginning to affect his Democrat supporters.
Similar remarks by David Harris of the American Jewish Committee criticizing
Obama to a congressional group also reflect rising distress among Democrats as
they begin to absorb the hollowness of the president's stated concern for the
welfare of Israel.
A public campaign must be launched. It is crucial that the case for Israel not
rest exclusively with Jewish Republicans or Christian evangelicals. Jewish
Democrats must be at the forefront if the bipartisan approach which for decades
has been the hallmark of US policy toward Israel is to be retained.
Democrat champions like Alan Dershowitz should explain to Obama why employing
so-called "tough love" against Israel is both immoral and counterproductive.
The burden rests on American Jews. They must stand up and be counted. Jewish
activists should make Obama understand that if he continues to appease Arabs by
distancing the US from Israel and reneging on prior American commitments, the
Jewish community, including many of his most devoted followers, will conclude
that he betrayed them.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Earlier this month, US President Barack Obama met with leaders
of American-Jewish organizations to discuss Israel's security, the Iranian
threat and recent US pressure on Israel to freeze settlements. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1004 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 28, 2009 Tuesday
The myth of a settlement freeze
BYLINE: DAVID NEWMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1030 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Obama administration is the first not to be blinkered by the
'freeze' terminology sold to it by Israeli officialdom. BORDERLINE VIEW. The
writer is professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University and editor
of the International Journal of Geopolitics. He is an expert on settlement
policy in the West Bank.
George Mitchell is in town this week, along with many senior Obama
administration officials. An agreement will have to be reached between Israel
and the US on the settlement freeze, an issue which has created serious tensions
between the two countries. Israeli officials have argued that verbal agreements
were reached with the previous US administration allowing for the continued
construction of housing for natural growth within existing settlements. This has
been denied by US officials and regardless, a new administration is entitled to
have a new policy.
There is probably no single factor which characterizes the continued occupation
of the West Bank more than the settlement network.
Excluding east Jerusalem, there are approximately 300,000 residents of this
region - a population which has grown through a mixture of migration from within
Israel and rapid natural growth among a young, largely religious population.
Since the late 1970s, there has been continued settlement expansion, regardless
of whether the government in power was right-wing or left-wing.
As far back as the Oslo agreements in the mid-1990s, it was clear that the
boundaries of two states with compact and contiguous territories could not be
drawn without mass evacuation of the settlements. This has little to do with
morality or legality, but with simple cartographic logic. The future existence
of settlements in the West Bank under Israeli control would bring about
territorial discontinuity, exclaves and enclaves, bypass roads for the exclusive
use of either Palestinians and Israelis - in short a totally unworkable map, as
the Oslo agreements proved beyond doubt.
Even a redrawing of the Israel-Palestine boundary to include many of the
settlements close to the Green Line, while the Palestinian state would receive
parcels of empty land in exchange, does not solve the problem. Whatever the
extent of potential territorial exchange, there would always remain a hard core
of the settlement network deep inside the West Bank which would have to be
evacuated. These include some of the earliest and most ideological hard-core of
the settlement movement - tens of thousands of settlers who would resist forced
evacuation by whatever means possible, and in a more violent manner than took
place during the evacuation of the Gaza settlements in 2005.
THE IDEA of a settlement freeze has been part of the political discourse for
well over 20 years. It first surfaced in the mid 1980s as part of negotiations
to establish a coalition government in Israel under the rotating premiership of
the Likud's Yitzhak Shamir and the then head of the Labor Party, and now
president, Shimon Peres. It followed a period during which a large number of new
settlements had been established by the Gush Emunim movement throughout the West
Bank, ever since the rise to power of the right-wing Begin administration in
1977.
The coalition agreement allowed for the continued consolidation and expansion of
existing settlements, while forbidding - for the time being - the establishment
of new ones. While the settler proponents opposed this freeze in public, in
retrospect it proved to be the action which allowed for the many new settlements
of the time to reach a reasonable threshold and economic viability.
And settlements continue to grow. This week's civil administration report shows
the settler population to have passed 300,000, with the latest contribution
being that of the haredi settlers - a group which had not traditionally been
part of the settlement network - most of them in Betar Illit. It is not Land of
Israel ideology that has attracted the haredim, but cheap housing. They would be
prepared to evacuate for the right economic compensation, but given their
location right next to the Green Line it is likely that future boundary
redrawing would enable them to remain in situ.
The term "settlement freeze" has since been inserted into numerous government
coalition agreements, but it has never hindered rapid population growth and
infrastructural expansion. Some of the most rapid expansion, ironically, took
place during Yitzhak Rabin's tenure in the early 1990s. Freeze has always been
applied, in Israeli terminology, to the establishment of new settlements, never
to the expansion of existing communities. The fact that the Obama administration
has finally cottoned on to this is the main reason behind the current political
tension. The myth has been exposed.
ANOTHER MYTH is the concept of "illegal outposts." The small prefabricated huts
set up on hilltops throughout the region by a young, even more radical group of
settler activists are now differentiated from the main settlement network. These
are "illegal," while the existing permanent communities are "legal." Not only is
this a convenient way around the prevention of new settlements being established
(because of the so-called settlement freeze) but it also provides convenient
locations for the Israeli government, every so often, to demonstrate its
determination to forcefully remove these few huts under the eyes of the
international media, while not touching the main settlement network.
If the government goes ahead in the next few weeks with its plans to remove a
number of these outposts, it will be accompanied by much media coverage and
violent opposition from the hilltop settlers and their supporters, who will be
bused in from other settlements and the national religious yeshivot. It is
almost certain that once the media has departed, the huts will be reestablished,
or that their removal will be compensated for by the 11 new outposts being
planned by the settler radicals to mark the visit of American politicians.
The settler movement has not realized its dream of Jewish sovereignty as far as
the Jordan River, and it has not prevented the world - or for that matter the
majority of the Israeli public - from accepting the inevitability of a
Palestinian state. But it has succeeded in making the implementation of the
two-state solution as difficult as it has ever been. Obama's is the first US
administration to see it for what it is, rather than be blinkered by the
"freeze" terminology sold to it by Israeli officialdom.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates meets with PM Binyamin
Netanyahu in Jerusalem Monday. Netanyahu's government and the Obama
administration have recently been involved in a public spat over the Israeli
settlements issue. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1005 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 28, 2009 Tuesday
The colonization of the conflict
BYLINE: SETH J. FRANTZMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 806 words
HIGHLIGHT: Weekly demonstrations at Bil'in against the security fence have
attracted a significant number of protest- tourists
Recent revelations that European embassies in Israel and the EU fund some
radical Israeli human rights organizations beg the question: To what degree is
the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians choreographed and colonized by
outsiders?
In the weekly protest at Bil'in, Palestinians again threw rocks at soldiers and
attempted to break through the security fence. But as happens every week, there
were more foreigners than Arabs. Even the Arabs that come aren't from nearby.
The event is like a play or sitcom staged again and again; the format is the
same every time.
So why does it go on? The protesters don't have an actual goal. They claim to be
Anarchists Against the Wall or peace activists, but the events at Bil'in aren't
peaceful and there is no realistic expectation that the weekly ritual will
actually affect the fence. Nor is the fence in that area particularly egregious;
it deviates from the Green Line by less than two kilometers and doesn't bisect
Arab homes or anything of that nature.
So why does it go on? It goes on because those who arrive there have a vested
interest in having it go on. Web sites (such as Bilin-village.org) devoted to
the protest stress that many important people and organizations have joined,
including the Israeli Jewish organization Physicians for Human Rights, the
International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and Gush Shalom. It is a mandatory stop
on any protest-tourist's visit to the Holy Land. And it is the place to get
wounded for foreign protesters.
Thus European Parliament Vice President Luisa Morgantini and Julio Toscano, an
Italian judge, were injured there in June 2008. Mairead Corrigan, who won a
Nobel Peace Prize for work in Northern Ireland, was hurt in an April 2007
protest. Lymor Goldstein, an Israeli lawyer, was wounded in 2006. But these
people weren't wounded accidentally or because the soldiers intended to wound
them; they were wounded because they wanted to be wounded. They chose to be
wounded as a sort of badge of honor.
No one is more emblematic of the symbiotic relationship between protesters and
Bil'in than Jonathan Pollak, a leader of Anarchists Against the Wall. A graphic
designer who grew up in Tel Aviv (and now lives in Jaffa), he is the son of
actor Yossi Pollak and brother of actor Avshalom Pollak and film director Shai
Pollak. He has supposedly been involved in more than 300 demonstrations. As part
of his work with the ISM, he even toured the US on a fund-raising mission in
2005. This type of protest- tourism isn't about a legitimate cause, it is about
a way of life; the protest is not a means to an end but the end in itself. Were
the wall to disappear, the protest would have to go on because so much is
invested in it.
Consider the amount of money that goes into funding the foreigners who attend
the Bil'in protest. Consider the air fares, the hotel accommodations and
transport to and from the site. Consider the Web sites, the numerous
organizations and the media attention. When Naomi Klein, a Canadian author,
visited Israel in June to launch her book The Shock Doctrine translated into
Hebrew, she made the required pilgrimage to Bil'in and voiced support for a
boycott of Israel: "It's an extraordinarily important part of Israel's identity
to be able to have the illusion of Western normalcy. When that is threatened,
when the rock concerts don't come, when the symphonies don't come, when a film
you really want to see doesn't play at the Jerusalem film festival... then it
starts to threaten the very idea of what the Israeli state is."
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very real, but there is a side that is
simply entertainment for the West. This is evidenced in the disproportionate
coverage in The New York Times and BBC of the most minor people, incidents and
events here, especially if there are olive trees in the background. The "peace"
organizations involved have a vested financial and personal interest in its
continuation. Without the conflict they would have nothing to do. That is why
peace activism at Bil'in doesn't take the form of peaceful protest, but of
rock-throwing and assaults designed to encourage the tear gas and rubber bullets
which are needed for people to claim they were "injured," all in front of the
cameras.
That isn't a peace protest, it's puerile posturing. Were the conflict to go away
the legions of people like Pollak and Klein would no longer be "activists" as a
job description. People don't work against their self-interest. If their job is
peace, they live for war because without it their life's work would disappear.
Furthermore, without Bil'in where would Europeans and Americans go for a
protest-tourist vacation? And why are these peace organizations funded by
European embassies in Israel? Isn't meddling in the internal affairs of a host
country contrary to the job of an embassy?
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Palestinian, Israeli, and foreign activists run from tear gas
fired by IDF troops during a weekly protest against the construction of the
security barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin near Ramallah. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1006 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 28, 2009 Tuesday
British criticism of Israel is nothing special
BYLINE: VIVIAN WINEMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 760 words
HIGHLIGHT: Operation Cast Lead has made putting the case for Israel all the more
challenging for Diaspora communities. Right of Reply. The writer is president of
the Board of Deputies of British Jews and chairman of the Jewish Leadership
Council.
Robin Shepherd's assertion in her July 21 article "New era as British hostility
reaches crescendo" that "the darkness is closing in" on Israel's reputation in
Great Britain is misguided and alarmist.
There is no doubt that Operation Cast Lead has made putting the case for Israel
all the more challenging for Diaspora communities - and the UK is certainly no
exception. But let's be clear, the "relentless, unremitting stream of
anti-Israel invective" that Shepherd refers to is still propagated, as it has
been for years, by a relatively small number of people with loud voices.
The appropriate response is not to declare that the situation has reached
"critical mass" and that an irreversible anti-Zionist malevolence has descended
on Britain; that is simply not the case. The correct response is to be realistic
about the degree of the problem and move forward with the huge amount of work
that has already been undertaken to ensure that Israel is getting the fair
hearing it deserves.
THE UNSUCCESSFUL boycott campaigns at the University and College Union (UCU) for
example, while troubling, do not mean that all British academics hate Israel. In
fact, the majority of the UCU's 120,000-strong membership cherish academic
freedom far beyond the antipathy to Israel harbored by a hard core of left-wing
zealots, and have been thoroughly embarrassed that their trade union has been
hijacked by hard-liners who devote so much time and resources to considering
boycotts. Certainly, the various union-inspired anti-Israel motions require our
response, but the clamor made by their proponents doesn't resonate with most
British union members, let alone the population at large.
Equally, anti-Zionist polemic published in the Guardian will come as no surprise
to those familiar with the British media. Intransigent leftist commentary has
been the traditional fare of both its Web site and its print media. Similarly,
War on Want, founded by members of a Socialist Worker faction, is simply
reverting to type and far from "Israel-haters... going in for the kill." The
usual suspects are simply using Operation Cast Lead as a pretext.
THE POLITICAL landscape, while affected by these things, has benefited hugely
from the relentless work done by our community in several areas. The UK leads
the way in Europe in calling for sanctions against Iran, and we are the only
country to have had a parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism, which
specifically considers the effects and implications of anti-Zionism. Each of the
leaders of our major political parties has made clear statements against boycott
campaigns focusing on Israel, and earlier this month Shahid Malik, the minister
for cohesion, launched a unique report which recommended measures to prevent the
use of Nazi analogies in anti-Israel discourse.
It was only a year ago that our prime minister addressed the Knesset on Israel's
Diamond Jubilee and professed his friendship - a friendship substantiated during
the conflict in Gaza, as it had been by Tony Blair during the war with Hizbullah
in 2006. Britain continues to cultivate strong economic relations with Israel.
It is the UK's largest individual export market and trading partner in the
region, and has boasted annual bilateral trade exceeding £2 billion for the past
five years, which is likely to reach £3 billion by 2012.
In July 2008, Gordon Brown announced the launch of the Britain-Israel Research
and Academic Exchange Partnership (BIRAX), a new program to enhance research and
academic cooperation. The 'BI ARTS' scheme encourages arts training for
professionals from the UK and Israel. The British Council continues to broker
contacts between Israeli and British professionals and policy-makers in several
areas, including conflict resolution, women in governance and human rights.
The list could go on.
CERTAINLY, there has been increased criticism of Israel in recent months, but no
more than anywhere else in the world. The suggestion that British opinion
formers are "among the most hostile to Israel in the Western world" is simply
misleading.
Let's not forget that it was in South Africa where the deputy minister of
foreign affairs was forced to apologize for "conflating Zionist pressure with
Jewish influence." It was in America where the president of Iran was hosted by
Columbia University, and it is in France where some of the most serious and
violent anti-Israel protests to date have been seen.
There's still a lot of work to be done, but let's make no mistake about it,
criticism of Israel in Britain is not novel, unique, or endemic.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 28, 2009 Tuesday
The road to NATO
BYLINE: AMNON RUBINSTEIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 759 words
HIGHLIGHT: NATO membership is conducive to enhancing Israel's integration into
the European community and will have a long-term beneficial effect on US-Israel
relations. The writer is a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center
Herzliya, a former minister of education and Knesset member, as well as the
recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law. www.amnonrubinstein.org
Israel's road to NATO is long and hard but in view of its strategic importance
it is worth trying to pursue it. A potential membership in the North Atlantic
alliance is crucially important for the following reasons:
* Such membership may decrease the willingness of potentially nuclear Arab and
Muslim states to "wipe Israel off the map." Article 5 of NATO's founding
Washington Treaty states that "an armed attack against one or more of them
[member states] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against
them all."
* As it is reasonable to assume that any claim to membership will not be
considered without a parallel admission of an Arab state - Jordan? Morocco?
Lebanon? Palestine? - such joint membership may lead to reduced tension between
the two Middle Eastern member states, as indeed was the case between Turkey and
Greece who in the past were on the brink of war.
* NATO membership is conducive to enhancing Israel's integration into the
European community and will have a long-range beneficial effect on US-Israel
relations.
* Last, but not least, such membership will decrease the psychological stress of
being an isolated island in a sea of rejection and enmity.
ISRAEL WILL have to face almost insurmountable obstacles: It will not become a
member of NATO, and enjoy the protection granted by Article 5, without a peace
deal with the Palestinians and without, as mentioned above, a corresponding
membership by another Arab state, as former NATO secretary-general Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer explained.
And there is a further obstacle. NATO membership and the duty of collective
defense are limited to Europe and North America. Furthermore, such membership
will - as things stand now - oblige Israel to enter into mutual consultations
before it undertakes any substantive military action as well as to join the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) with all its attendant problems.
However, it seems that considering the strategic benefits resulting from a NATO
membership, these obstacles can be overcome or side-stepped: The duty to enter
into consultation in the long run will not place upon Israel an impossible
burden and, indeed, may have the advantage of preventing rash actions. As for
the NPT obligation, the US has shown recently that it is ready to sign
strategically important treaties with nuclear India, despite the fact that it
has not signed the NPT.
The limitation of membership to North American and European countries is a
serious obstacle, but there is a growing feeling among NATO's top echelons that
events - like the war in Afghanistan - have made this limitation irrelevant to
present-day threats, and that a danger to the security of the member states may
loom outside the North Atlantic region and may necessitate new rules for
membership if NATO is to be effective in its antiterrorist campaign. Already in
1994, NATO expanded its ambit by initiating its "Partnership for Peace" (PfP)
program, under which European nonmember states can cooperate with NATO. This
partnership too is presently open to European states only, but NATO is engaged
now in a redefinition of its global responsibilities and is conducting a
comprehensive global threat assessment.
THE ROAD to membership or even partnership is long and arduous, but cooperation
with NATO can precede these steps. In this sphere, significant progress has been
made recently: Despite Israel's worsening public image, it is participating in
NATO's Operation Active Endeavor - a multination, multifaceted response to the
terrorist threat. It has decided in principle to deploy a navy corvette to the
operation, under the command of Vice Admiral Maurizio Gemignani, playing its
part in "continuous watch and deterrent presence" in the eastern Mediterranean
and an Israel Navy liaison officer is already based at the Naples headquarters.
This, of course, is a minor sphere of cooperation (although it is the only NATO
operation under Article 5) but, together with other contacts between NATO and
Israeli bodies, such as the Atlantic Forum of Israel, it signifies that the
long, hard road is not totally blocked.
Needless to say, without improving relations between Israel and the US and
Europe, without readiness to reach an understanding on the settlement freeze and
the eviction of the illegal outposts, the road to NATO will be a nonstarter.
Indeed, the government will soon have to decide whether to tackle Israel's real
security risks or give in to a determined minority which seeks to impose on a
passive majority a policy which will block the road to NATO.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was in Israel in
January to discuss Israel-NATO cooperation in the framework of the Mediterranean
Dialogue. (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2009 Monday
Fighting our friends instead of our enemies
BYLINE: YEHUDA BAUER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 623 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Norwegians believe the contrast between the work of a brilliant
and universally-acclaimed author, and his personality as a pro-Nazi, is an
occasion for educational efforts. The writer is a historian.
A number of important public and academic Jewish groups and personalities have
recently attacked the current Norwegian chairmanship of the International Task
Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF). The ITF, founded
in 1998 by then Swedish premier Goran Persson, is an intergovernmental body
providing a political umbrella for global efforts to promote Holocaust education
and fight Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. Until now, 27 governments have
joined, including, of course, Israel.
The occasion for the attacks was the decision of Norway to commemorate the
Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, a Nobel Prize laureate in literature on the one
hand, and in his old age a fervent supporter of the Nazis on the other. The
Norwegians believe the contrast between the work of a brilliant and
universally-acclaimed author, and his personality as a pro-Nazi, is an occasion
for educational efforts. After the war ended, Hamsun was tried by a Norwegian
court, but unlike the Norwegian Nazi leader Vidkun Quisling, he was not
sentenced to death but to a heavy fine and penury, with the comment that he was
mentally unstable (he was 86 years old).
The above-mentioned writers demanded that the ITF terminate the Norwegian
chairmanship forthwith. As the ITF is a body run by consensus, that would have
meant the agreement of 26 governments to take such action. The writers obviously
know that this is impossible, so their attack is basically against an
intergovernmental body that includes Israel, the US, the UK, Poland, France and
so on, working in the fields of Holocaust education and anti- Semitism. Clearly,
therefore, this is nothing but an exercise in public relations.
ICAN HARDLY claim to objective. I admit to the crime of having been a major
influence in the ITF, as its academic guide, since its inception, and I am still
its honorary chairman (I am also the honorary chairman of the Simon Wiesenthal
Scientific Institute of Holocaust Research recently established in Vienna in
honor of my late friend, Simon Wiesenthal).
The arguments against Norway would be more credible if the Norwegians did not
admit that there is anti-Semitism in Norway, that they ignored or wanted to bury
Hamsun's pro- Nazi stand or that they hampered ITF's work in fighting
anti-Semitism in any way. Not only is none of this true, but it was the
Norwegian chairman that, before this controversy exploded, insisted on including
the fight against anti-Semitism as a central component in the ITF's immediate
future program - the proposal was accepted by acclamation. The Norwegian Center
for Holocaust Studies, located in Quisling's old villa, held a two-day
conference in which Scandinavian, especially Norwegian, scholars dealt in detail
with Norwegian Nazi collaborators, SS men and pro-Nazi tendencies in these
countries during World War II.
Unfortunately anti-Semitism, including the Scandinavian variety, cannot be dealt
with by public relations stunts. I cannot guarantee that the ITF's work has
succeeded. I only know that without it, we would be in a much worse situation.
For 11 years we have educated very large numbers of teachers, have made possible
reconstruction of sites, have introduced our message into museums and so on. Yad
Vashem is a central pillar in ITF's work.
The governments represented in the ITF, including Israel, have informed the ITF
that they fully support Norway's chairmanship. On July 20, the chair published a
statement rejecting the accusations against it, and promised to continue its
struggle against anti-Semitism and for Holocaust education. I do not know what
was behind the attacks on Norway, but I am deeply worried about an increasing
Jewish tendency to fight against our friends instead of our enemies.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Nobel Prize laureate and fervent Nazi supporter Norwegian author
Knut Hamsun
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2009 Monday
When righteous stumble
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 695 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
'For these defendants, corruption was a way of life," said New Jersey District
Attorney Ralph Marra, speaking of rabbis and politicians ensnared in a $3
million money- laundering scandal.
For the rest of us, it was painful and embarrassing to watch Rabbi Saul Kassin,
87, the venerable leader of the Syrian Jewish community of metropolitan New
York, being led away by federal agents.
Images of the arrested ultra-Orthodox Jews being escorted to a waiting bus
generated headlines in the American press that said it all: "Is nothing sacred!"
(The New York Daily News); "Walk of shame" (Newark Star Ledger); and "Kosher
nostra & dirty Jersey" (The New York Post). The paper led its story with:
"Everything was on sale - from politicians to kidneys."
ONE OF the reasons ultra-Orthodox Jews wear dark suits, wide-brimmed hats and
ritual fringes hanging outside their trousers is as a self-reminder that the
Holy One above is a constant presence. Dark colors remind the pious that life
should not be taken frivolously - that its purpose is not to revel in the
pleasures of the here and now, but to prepare a place for the soul in the
eternal world to come. Haredi garb is intended to instill "fear of heaven."
Among the ultra-Orthodox - Hassidic, Lithuanian and Sephardi - distinctive dress
is intended to make it difficult to sin publicly or privately. You can never
blend in or forget who you are.
It would be unimaginable for a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews to be captured on
camera robbing a bank or mugging an elderly pensioner who had just cashed a
social security check; or beating a drug dealer senseless for selling heroin on
a street corner they had staked claim to.
Plainly, however, haredi garb is not a foolproof protection against immorality.
Lately, the Jewish world has been roiled by the bad behavior of people who are
identifiably Jewish. Sometimes it is not a matter of clothing. Bernard Madoff,
for instance, was described as an Orthodox Jew, not because of how he dressed
but presumably because of his synagogue affiliation and the fact that he served
on the boards of major Orthodox educational institutions. But the magnitude of
Madoff's crimes was such that his garb was beside the point; his Jewishness was
anyway in the public domain.
From the streets of Jerusalem to the streets of New Jersey, the media have
lately been spotlighting what seems like an epidemic of ultra-Orthodox Jews
behaving badly. In fact, the number of haredim who riotously attack police
officers in Jerusalem or engage in money laundering in New Jersey is minuscule.
And it would be stating the obvious to point out that the vast majority of
ultra-Orthodox Jews are law-abiding; many live simple, unadorned lives,
genuinely focusing their energies on the study of Torah and the fulfillment of
the mitzvot, down to their minutiae.
Yet were ultra-Orthodoxy a brand, one might argue that the "franchise" has taken
a public-relations hit over the years. Fair or not, the stock of the entire
ultra-Orthodox world declines when outwardly pious Jews turn out to be
slumlords, child-molesters or wife-abusers, proprietors of nursing homes that
neglect their residents, dealers in human organs, money-launderers, or those who
have no compunction about hurling bricks through the windshields of cars on
Shabbat.
REPENTANCE is an essential tenet of the Jewish way of life. So there needs to be
some genuine soul-searching in the haredi world on two levels. Since it is now
pretty much demonstrated that distinctive garb doesn't inoculate against
unlawful behavior, what would?
And since these crimes also intimate a weakening of faith and an obsession with
materialism, what steps can the faithful take to strengthen the tenets of their
belief?
And what does this mean for the rest of us? It does not mean that those
affiliated with other streams of Judaism, or the unaffiliated secular, can
afford to be smug. Human beings are fallible. Instead, it reinforces the idea
that Judaism strives for a golden mean which combines fidelity to tradition with
morality; ritual with responsibilities to our fellow human beings - and, it
should go without saying, an obligation to adhere to the laws of the land.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2009 Monday
Letters
BYLINE: Leslie Greenbaum, Judy Goldin, Ilana Kirschner, Bernard Smith, Harvey
Mitchell, Larry Derfner responds, Murray Greenfield, Josh Hasten, Jane Hirsch,
Jeremy Weiss
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1203 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Mass message
Sir, - Tel Aviv deserves a fitting commemoration of its anniversary. However,
Verdi's Requiem does not fit the bill" wrote Lotte Lapian in "Mass miss"
(Letters, July 23).
I was present with 100,000 other people at what can only be considered a
powerful musical event. Can one imagine the spiritual and moral uplift if that
enthusiastic audience had sung "Hatikva" following the performance? The message
would have been an appropriate commemoration of Tel Aviv's centennial.
Perhaps, though, it would have been asking a little too much of Daniel
Barenboim.
LESLIE GREENBAUM
Pardess Hanna/Karkur
Sir, - Instead of the focus on La Scala, maybe Daniel Barenboim should have been
asked why he chose this particular piece.
JUDY GOLDIN
Kiryat Ono
Sir, - How right Stanley Cohen is ("Requiem victory," Letters, July 24): I was
13 years old and privileged to hear all the rehearsals for Verdi's Requiem in
the Terezin (Theresienstadt) Ghetto, as I lived in the house where they took
place. It was a time when I could just listen and forget the horrible conditions
we were living under; and I have never forgotten the experience.
ILANA KIRSCHNER
Kfar Saba
'Lines drawn on maps'
Sir, - Those with a sense of humor can enjoy the juxtaposition of British
Foreign Secretary David Miliband's "lines drawn on maps by colonial powers" and
failure "to establish two states in Palestine" ("New era in British hostility
reaches crescendo," Robin Shepherd, July 21).
Precisely because the British colonial power drew a line on a map, its colonial
secretary, Winston Churchill, succeeded in establishing the forerunner of the
second state in Palestine, Transjordan (later Jordan).
In so doing, Mr. Churchill, in direct contradiction of British intentions during
the first decades of the 20th century, tore away 78 percent of Palestine from
the future Jewish state, which had already been made a legal entity by the San
Remo Convention in April 1920.
Yes, there really are two countries in Palestine: the Arab state in eastern
Palestine, also known as Trans- Jordan, and the Jewish state in western
Palestine, or Cis- Jordan, brought into being by the Balfour Declaration, the
San Remo Convention and the Treaty of Sevres, all the expression of the desire
and design of prime minister David Lloyd George and others to give Palestine to
the Jews (Arab aspirations to be fulfilled in Syria and Mesopotamia).
Had the British governments of the 1920s, '30s and '40s carried out the original
intentions of the League of Nations, Lloyd George, the British Zionists of the
early 20th century, Woodrow Wilson and the US, Israel would now include Judea,
Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza and Jordan up to the Hejaz Railway. It would also
be populated by 10-20 million Jews.
BERNARD SMITH
Jerusalem
Selective condemnation
Sir, - Nobody is suggesting that Human Rights Watch is a friend of Saudi Arabia
or that HRW should not raise funds from citizens of Saudi Arabia concerned with
human rights. However, there is something clearly wrong when HRW chooses to
raise funds in Saudi Arabia by concentrating on violations of human rights in
Israel and ignores all "home- grown" violations of human rights.
If Larry Derfner is correct and HRW has no "agenda" against Israel, why in
raising funds in Saudia Arabia does HRW ignore Saudi Arabia's own violations of
human rights? Are we to understand that "arbitrary arrest and torture" and
"slavery-like exploitation" of foreign labor in Saudi Arabia are unimportant?
Larry Derfner provides no answer to these questions. Until he does, I believe it
is only reasonable to suppose that HRW, like many other NGOs, has a hidden
agenda against Israel ("The smearing of human rights organizations," July 23).
HARVEY MITCHELL
Mazkaret Batya
Larry Derfner responds:
HRW officials at that meeting in Saudi Arabia didn't "ignore" Saudi human rights
violations nor "concentrate" on Israeli violations. Even the Saudi
state-controlled Arab News didn't give such a distorted report of the event.
According to HRW officials, they discussed a range of their activities,
including their well-known work in Saudi Arabia. No one's disproved that
statement, because no one can.
Softer landing
Sir, - Re "Land reform & the national interest" (Editorial, July 26): In New
York City there is a very successful program which aims to bring people back to
live and work in the city.
Builders receive certain benefits for the construction of apartments, be they
for rent or sale. The city, in turn, has a list of persons or families and knows
their incomes. Basically, if you earn up to a certain amount, you may be
eligible for one of these apartments.
The landlord of these units charges the market price, but because of certain
benefits from the city, he must allocate 20 percent of his units to these
lower-income groups, which are able to rent apartments at a 50% discount.
This program has been shown to work well for lower- income individuals and
families, as well as for the builders. In this manner, the land has served the
public at large.
MURRAY GREENFIELD
Tel Aviv
If you want to help
Sir, - Re "Business is still dismal, but the hardy residents of Sderot are
'hanging in there'" (July 24): The relative quiet the 20,000 people of Sderot
are experiencing - rockets still fall sporadically - can only be attributed to
the bravery of our IDF soldiers, who delivered a harsh blow to the Hamas terror
infrastructure this past January. That said, the people of Sderot are well aware
that the situation can change at the drop of a pin.
Business has by no means returned to "pre-Kassam" days. As a result, the Hesder
Yeshiva in Sderot has started a special fund to help those in desperate need of
financial assistance. It also continues to build, to show our enemies that
Sderot will not become a ghost town.
Those interested in providing for the needy in Sderot or helping the Hesder
thrive while spreading Torah Zionism in Southern Israel should email
jhasten@bezeqint.net
JOSH HASTEN
Jerusalem
Love at first sight
Sir, - How heart-warming to hear that Maccabiah athlete Dara Podjarski is making
aliya ("Aussie athlete answers Netanyahu's call for aliya," July 26). That "love
at first sight" effect which our wonderful country has on first-time visitors is
exactly that which I and my family experienced during our first trip here in
1983.
Dara's positive view of all that Israel has to offer reinforces the picture
painted for the nation of Israel by Moses throughout the Book of Deuteronomy,
which we began reading in synagogue on Shabbat.
JANE HIRSCH
Kochav Yai'r
Great games -
but what a shame
Sir, - I would like to congratulate all the athletes who came to Israel to
compete ("Israel bids farewell to world... for now," July 24). The Maccabiah
Games are unique because they bring Jews from around the world together to
compete against each other.
It is a great shame, however, that the organizers set the events for during the
three weeks before Tisha B'Av, meaning that many people could not attend the
opening and closing ceremony due to the live musical performances. In addition,
sporting events on Friday finished too close to the start of Shabbat.
Those who organized the event ought to have been more sensitive to the observant
community.
JEREMY WEISS
Tel Aviv
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The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2009 Monday
Fatah's power structure spells trouble for peace with Israel
BYLINE: Barry Rubin
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1009 words
HIGHLIGHT: The designation of Fatah as 'moderate' rests on a rather broad
definition of that word. THE REGION
With Fatah, ruler of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO - in effect,
Israel's Palestinian negotiating partner - planning to hold a rare congress to
determine the group's future, it's a good time to examine its leadership, the
Fatah Central Committee.
Two important facts leap out at you: the high degree of both age and
intransigence among those who lead the Palestinian movement. A generational
struggle cannot be postponed forever, but the younger cohort may be even more
radical. Almost all the members have been on the committee for more than 20
years; the last one was added in 1995. All are over age 65.
Why are Fatah's leaders so rarely discussed? Because to do so immediately shows
there isn't going to be any comprehensive peace agreement in this generation and
that the designation of Fatah as "moderate" rests on a rather broad definition
of that word.
PLO and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, 74 years old, is no dictator able to order
around the other leaders. Even if he wanted to make a compromise deal - which he
doesn't - he couldn't deliver his own purported followers, much less his Hamas
rivals.
Of the Fatah Central Committee's 17 surviving members, only three can be
classified as relative moderates. At least seven can be called radicals - many
still oppose the original 1993 Oslo agreement - even in relation to the late
PLO, Fatah, and PA leader Yasser Arafat. The remaining seven might be called
hardliners whose views are close to those of Arafat, which makes any peace
agreement with Israel impossible.
ONE THING that unites them all is a hatred of Hamas and a belief that Fatah is
the natural and only conceivable leader of the Palestinian movement. They are
eager to make a deal with Hamas, but only if the Islamists accept a subordinate
role, which won't happen. Many in the younger Fatah generation, however, are
sympathetic to a more equal coalition with their "brothers" to fight Israel.
At present, 14 of 17 members could never make a comprehensive peace treaty with
Israel. Even the fifteenth, Abbas himself, is so firm on demanding all
Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to live in Israel, he could be
added to this group.
The two genuine moderates on the committee, at least by Palestinian standards,
are 71-year-old Nabil Shaath and 72-year-old Ahmad Qurei (Abu Ala). Both have
declined in importance in recent years. Shaath reached the peak of his power as
Arafat's moderate front-man, though he briefly served as prime minister in 2005.
Shaath owns his own successful - though partially through his political
connections and with serious accusations of corruption - business.
Qurei was prime minister for most of the 2003-2006 period but quarrelled with
Abbas. Neither Shaath nor Qurei has any political base of support. These two
might well be willing to make a two-state deal with Israel but their political
power today is zero.
In comparison, many of those who are far more extreme hold positions of power
and influence in the organization. They and not Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (who
is technically an independent) or PA President Abbas are the ones who really
control Fatah, the main Palestinian institutions, and the West Bank.
The best-known of those rejecting a two-state solution and the leading figure in
the radical group is the Tunis- based Fatah chiarman, 78-year-old Farouq
Qaddumi. He continues to oppose the Oslo agreement and is very popular in the
movement, though clearly of the generation now moving off the stage. He is also
extremely close to Syria. Periodically, he snipes at Abbas and while he isn't
going to displace Abbas, his views - which have not changed over the last 40
years - still set much of the organization's and movement's tone.
Another influential radical is Salim al-Zaanoun, head of the Palestine National
Council, the PLO's quasi- parliament. Zaanoun has always denied that the PLO
changed its Charter to recognize Israel, as it pretended to do in 1996. He ought
to know and in fact he is quite correct. This was a violation of the
Palestinians' obligations under the Oslo agreement, one of many which have gone
unnoticed by the West.
The most actively important radicals in Fatah's hierarchy are Sakhr Habash (Abu
Nizar), long-time head of Fatah's Revolutionary Committee (the body immediately
below the Central Committee) and Fatah's key ideologue, and Sharif Ali Mashal
(Abu Zaki), long-time PLO director of Arab world relations and now Fatah's
representative in Lebanon. Both men are close to being traditional, radical Arab
nationalists. To hear what these two say is to be back in the world of PLO
politics from the 1960s and leaves no illusion about the possibility of peace
between the Palestinians and Israel.
WHAT ABOUT the "merely" hardline group? This includes veteran Fatah member Hani
al-Hasan, 72, who criticized Abbas's leadership and urged continued attacks on
settlers but not within Israel itself, and three former PLO diplomats: Hakam
Balaoui (Abu Marwan), a personal favourite of Arafat, Abdallah Franji, and Subhi
Abu Karsh (Abu Monzer). Another is Intisar al-Wazir (Um Jihad), 68, widow of a
key PLO leader and sometime minister of social warfare, the only woman on the
committee.
Finally, among the most veteran members is Nasir Yusuf, a former police
commander and national security advisor. The last member added, in 1995, and the
only one not living in exile for decades is Zakariyya al-Agha, a 67- year-old
doctor who Arafat made token leader of Fatah in the Gaza Strip with no real
power. There is not a single local West Bank member, despite the fact that this
is the area ruled by Fatah.
The end of Abbas's career is in sight. There is no conceivable consensus
candidate to become head of Fatah, the PA, and/or the PLO. Equally, there's no
leadership willing to make any comprehensive peace agreement with Israel. The
Palestinian movement's troubles may get much worse.
How can such huge factors be ignored by those many people and governments in the
West acting as if a quick resolution of the conflict is both possible and such a
high priority?
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. A hardliner on the issue of
refugees. (Credit: AP)
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1012 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2009 Monday
Netanyahu's self-inflicted crisis
BYLINE: Jeff Barak
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 892 words
HIGHLIGHT: It was the prime minister who decided to turn US opposition to
construction in east Jerusalem into a confrontation with Washington. REALITY
CHECK. The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
Binyamin Netanyahu's second term as prime minister is proving the truth of Karl
Marx's comment: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce,"
although the speed with which his government is descending into the farcical is
surprising, even for the most ardent of Netanyahu's critics.
A key hallmark of his first administration was Netanyahu's inability to govern,
highlighted by an inefficient Prime Minister's Office and resulting in an unruly
coalition. In the end, Netanyahu fell, not at the hands of the opposition but
because his coalition partners and one-time political allies brought him down.
LAST WEEK'S events in the Knesset were a stark reminder for Netanyahu that even
with an elephantine administration of 30 ministers and deputy ministers, his
government is not stable. After only 100 or so days in power, the wheels are
already beginning to come off.
Netanyahu's failure to drive through his flagship legislation for reforming the
Israel Lands Administration is a harbinger of further political embarrassments
for the prime minister. The inability of Netanyahu and his coalition whip, Ze'ev
Elkin, to see this political pratfall coming is painfully reminiscent of
Netanyahu's government failures in his first administration.
The roots of Netanyahu's Knesset recent defeat can be traced back to the prime
minister's shifting positions during the budget discussions, when he left Yuval
Steinitz, his finance minister and closest political ally, out to dry. Netanyahu
not only cut deals over Steinitz's head with Histadrut leader Ofer Eini, he more
importantly also reneged on his most basic economic principles.
When politicians see weakness and zig-zagging in a prime minister, that prime
minister loses his deterrent power. After first-term Likud MK and political
nonentity Miri Regev successfully challenged Netanyahu over imposing VAT on
fruits and vegetables, further challenges to his authority were inevitable and,
as we saw last week, not slow in coming. While not quite a dead man walking, any
dreams Netanyahu might have had of serving a full term of four years as prime
minister have already been shattered, even before his administration has
finished its first Knesset session.
The troop of top-level American visitors to Jerusalem this week: special envoys
George Mitchell and Dennis Ross, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National
Security Advisor General James Jones, will no doubt have watched Netanyahu's
domestic political hammering with interest, but also with some concern. Will
Netanyahu's weakened internal standing force him to harden his stance externally
vis-^- vis the Palestinians?
Again, looking back to Netanyahu's first term as prime minister, one can see a
pattern. Then, after signing the Hebron Agreement and handing over more of the
West Bank to the Palestinians than Ehud Barak ever did, Netanyahu launched the
controversial Har Homa building project in Jerusalem and demolished the chances
of improving relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This time
around, after grudgingly announcing his acceptance (with conditions) of two
states for two peoples, Netanyahu immediately sought to create a new crisis with
Washington over another construction project in Jerusalem.
The building of 20 new houses in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East
Jerusalem will not fundamentally change the demographic balance of Israel's
capital. The Americans understand this and although they voiced their opposition
to the decision to go ahead with turning the empty, Jewish-owned Shepherd Hotel
into an apartment building, their disagreement was voiced discreetly in a
low-key meeting. It was Netanyahu who decided to turn this traditional and
consistent US opposition to Jewish construction in East Jerusalem into a crisis
between Washington and his administration.
Netanyahu's bombastic comments at last week's cabinet meeting that "united
Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people in the State of Israel and our
sovereignty over the city is not subject to appeal" were a return to the Bibi of
old, the Netanyahu before the Bar-Ilan speech. And, like the Bibi of old, while
his remarks to the cabinet that "There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in
the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the
city's east" might make a convincing a soundbite for his constituency, they are
not 100 percent accurate.
The FACT is that while American Jews like Irving Moskowitz can buy land in East
Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods, a Palestinian resident of, say, Sheikh Jarrah
cannot purchase an apartment in many parts of west Jerusalem, because the Israel
Lands Administration, which owns the land, will only enter into a contract with
Israeli citizens of persons entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return.
So, on meeting with him this week, the American visitors will have to ask
themselves with which Netanyahu they are dealing: the Bibi of old who sees a
Palestinian state as an existential threat to Israel and who will do all in his
power to make sure it never comes about, or the new Netanyahu, a pragmatist who
has spoken in favor of the creation of a Palestinian state and who appears to
have authorized Defense Minister Barak to negotiate the terms of a settlement
freeze with Washington.
The problem is: Does Netanyahu himself know what he stands for these days?
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2009 Monday
When blacks and Jews walked arm in arm
BYLINE: MARILYN HENRY
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 919 words
HIGHLIGHT: There was no Us and Them in the burial mound at Old Jolly Farm. METRO
VIEWS
This has been a remarkable year for civil rights history in the US, the kind of
year that many Americans my age - baby-boomers - dreamed of, but never expected
to see in our lifetimes.
A black man, Barack Obama, was inaugurated as president of the US in January -
and in Philadelphia, James A. Young, a black man, was elected mayor last May.
Not in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known as the "city of brotherly love," but in
Philadelphia, Mississippi, infamous in my lifetime for the 1964 murders of three
young men, two Jews from New York and a black man from Meridian, Mississippi.
"By any measure, for a city that is 55 percent white, especially one with
Philadelphia's notorious racial past, to elect a black man mayor is remarkable,"
the local Mississippi newspaper, The Neshoba Democrat, said in an editorial.
"The election illustrates just how far Philadelphia has come since three young
men registering blacks to vote were murdered here by the Ku Klux Klan 45 years
ago this June. Our reputation has been stained ever since as a racist, backward,
bigoted backwater."
In 1964, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, had gone to Mississippi
for "Freedom Summer," in which busloads of volunteers - "Freedom Riders" -
converged on the American South. They assisted blacks with voter registration,
education and other basic civil rights that were persistently denied by local
authorities and violently challenged by white supremacists. The Freedom Riders
came from more than 30 states and 10 countries; about half the white Freedom
Riders were Jewish.
Goodman and Schwerner were jailed with James Chaney, 21, on June 21, 1964, on a
minor traffic charge. They were released, ambushed, shot and then buried in an
earthen dam on a site known as Old Jolly Farm, six miles southwest of
Philadelphia. After a relentless search by federal officials, their bodies were
found on August 4.
It took decades for the state of Mississippi to indict a former Ku Klux Klan
leader, Edgar Ray Killen, for the murders. In June 2005, he was acquitted of
murder but found guilty of manslaughter in the three deaths. Killen, then 80,
was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
THE MURDERS propelled the civil rights struggle in the US, engaging and
outraging the federal government and inspiring a dramatic nonviolent march from
Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. As federal troops stood guard,
3,200 people began the 54-mile trek. At the head of the march Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel, a refugee, walked arm-in-arm with civil rights, political and
religious leaders, including the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. "I am here
because I am involved in the fate and dignity of my fellow man," said Heschel,
then a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
The Selma march seemed to symbolize the symbiosis of black-Jewish relations. It
seemed to be the moment when there was no Us and Them, because blacks and Jews
were equally unwelcome, equally pariahs in America. And that was not a time when
minorities distinguished, ranked and compared their relative victimhood.
There are legitimate communal differences between blacks and Jews and other
minorities, but racism should not be one of them. Racism is not relative. Bigots
are bigots; there are no partial bigots who can be forgiven for some
"acceptable" bias. Bigotry encompasses racism, anti- Semitism, gay-bashing and
other forms of xenophobia. It is folly for Jews to feel more at ease because the
hate-crime statistics show other groups are more at risk than are Jews. That may
be true today. What of tomorrow?
Earlier this month, Obama spoke in New York at the centennial convention of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It is a
revered organization, in which Jews played substantial roles, that has won some
of the most important legal decisions on civil rights and education in American
history.
No doubt some question the continuing relevance of the organization as it
welcomed the first black American president. It would seem that advancement
indeed had stretched as far as possible, far beyond all dreams.
Obama acknowledged the achievements of the NAACP, and he acknowledged that
African Americans face some social and economic problems that other groups do
not.
However, as he spoke of the "pain of discrimination" in America, Obama had a
laundry list of minorities' woes: Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own
country; Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion because they kneel to pray; and
"our gay brothers and sisters," still taunted, attacked and denied their rights.
Opportunity, he said, should be within the reach not only of African Americans,
but of all Americans, of every race and creed.
Obama closed his speech by referring to Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. "If three
civil rights workers in Mississippi - black, white, Christian and Jew, city-born
and country-bred - could lay down their lives in freedom's cause, I know we can
come together to face down the challenges of our own time."
The president was speaking to the NAACP, but the message should - must -
resonate with American Jews as well. We are quick to spot anti-Semitism, often
to the exclusion of other forms of prejudice. Let us remember: There was no Us
and Them when the NAACP was founded. There was no Us and Them in the burial
mound at Old Jolly Farm. There cannot be Us and Them now. This will truly be a
remarkable moment in civil rights history when we, like Heschel, become
"involved in the fate and dignity of [our] fellow man."
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: RABBI ABRAHAM HESCHEL marches in Selma. About half the white
Freedom Riders were Jewish.
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1014 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2009 Sunday
Land reform & the national interest
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 717 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
Labor MK Shelly Yechimowitz characterized last Wednesday's government failure to
pass the Israel Lands Authority(ILA) reform as "a victory of idealism over
interests."
Her claim should not be discounted out of hand.
Yechimowitz didn't merely contest the ILA reform exclusively from her own
left-wing of the political arena. She went so far as to solicit support from
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. She personally met with him and came away with
a letter in which he warned against "hasty moves" that might possibly lead to an
infringement of the Halachic command that "the land [of Israel] shall not be
sold forever."
While Yechimowitz was motivated by socialist reluctance to surrender a tiny
country's most valuable resource to private commercial speculation, she was
joined in her campaign by forces from the opposite end of the political
spectrum, like some Likudniks (most prominent among them Vice Premier Moshe
Ya'alon), and the National Union and Jewish Home factions. Their opposition
arose from the demand that the Jewish state hold on to national Jewish land, so
that it does not end up in the hands of interests inimical to the Zionist
enterprise.
Moreover, moderate Laborites, who unlike the more ideological Yechimowitz
espouse coalition membership, also absented themselves from the plenum during
Wednesday's vote.
The result was a major embarrassment foremost to Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu, who had touted the reform as a crucial plank in his economic
platform. Netanyahu's stated aim was to lower land values and thereby (land
being housing's costliest component) bring down real estate prices. Besides
making homes more affordable - a worthy cause in itself - this might spur a
construction boom, create more jobs and generate economic growth.
Currently 93% of land in Israel is public-owned. Netanyahu argued that this
abets obstructionist bureaucracy and that unsnarling red-tape is in everyone's
interest. Breaking up the giant ILA monopoly, transferring leased lands to
private ownership, decentralizing and giving more say to local planning
commissions, would spur greater efficiency and smoother/swifter services for all
citizens.
Yet Netanyahu's vision wasn't universally shared. Green organizations, social
activists, farmers and others warned privatization would spark real estate
development anarchy. Greedy contractors would sate their ravenous appetites,
without regard to incalculable and irreparable damage to areas where no master
plans have yet been finalized. Farm land would become exorbitantly taxed and
prohibitively expensive for farmers. Eventually the future of agriculture in
Israel might be altogether compromised, succumb to urban sprawl and its
consequent drain on the limited national infrastructure, intensify accrued
environmental harm and accelerate the disappearance of the last of Israel's
green lungs and open spaces.
THE FACT that such a unity of otherwise incongruous political forces could be
assembled on this issue illustrates more than all else that it was emotive and
not just crass political power play.
The notion of the Jewish people owning the land - the Jewish national legacy -
was deeply ingrained into many generations here, Left and Right, throughout the
20th Century. No matter how sound Netanyahu's business logic, it would
necessitate an overhaul in the people's mindset, which obviously had not
occurred. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin courageously sought to warn Netanyahu
that a political debacle was in the offing and he managed to pull this item from
the budget's attendant "arrangements bill."
All this, however, doesn't mean that Netanyahu's cause is entirely lost. He is
liable to try again and may yet prevail. But it wouldn't be because he will have
become more right. Netanyahu may just improve his political gamesmanship and
employ steamroller tactics to assure himself a majority.
This is hardly an unlikely scenario. Were it to take place, we would know that a
profound change had been rammed down the nation's throat.
If Netanyahu is correct about any aspect of this debate, it is that the ILA is
severely flawed. However, he will still need to persuade the citizenry and its
representatives that his good intentions won't pave the road to someplace
particularly undesirable.
Political intimidation is not the way to do it.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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1015 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2009 Sunday
Separation anxiety
BYLINE: HERB KEINON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 908 words
HIGHLIGHT: OUT THERE. Finally I could empathize with anti-aliya relatives
I sat across from my 18-year-old daughter at a local shwarma eatery the other
night - the one with that special ambience that only comes from being situated
inside a gas station - looked into her eyes and for the first time felt empathy
for the stridently anti-aliya mother of a very close friend of mine.
This is a mother whose heart was broken long ago when her daughter followed her
Zionistic impulses and left home for Israel's shores. This is a mother who - and
I'm seriously understating matters here - never really got over it.
"Ah, she'll make her peace with the idea of your aliya eventually," I told my
friend many, many years ago, trying to make her feel better about being
essentially cut off from her mother.
Meaning well, I tried to console and regale her with stories about American
parents who at first adamantly objected to their children's aliya, but who in
the end accepted their kid's move and eventually even moved to Jerusalem
themselves, frequenting Betar Jerusalem soccer games and buying their groceries
every week in Mahaneh Yehuda. I would tell tales of parents who at first opposed
their offspring's move across the ocean, but then couldn't resist coming here
summer after summer to see their grandchildren.
"Give her time," I said. "She'll move on; she'll get over it." Or not.
IT TURNS OUT I didn't know my friend's mother, a woman who never really got over
it and whose relationship with her daughter has never been the same. My friend
and her husband have tried to make the best of a bad situation over the years,
visiting the States when they could, sending their kids to grandma's house in
the summer, because grandma wouldn't come visit them here.
But, unlike the happy-ending versions to similar situations other people have
experienced, there was never any ultimate acceptance in this case, never any
final closure. Life doesn't always work that way; things are not always neatly
wrapped up; time does not always heal. Often problems are not resolved, and the
principals just go on, doing the best they can under difficult circumstances.
My heart went out to my friend largely because my father was both proud and
supportive when I moved here. I'm sure he secretly wished I would return someday
to be in close proximity, to continue to do my chores, to be around when he grew
old; but he was always supportive nonetheless. At a certain point in time, say
after I was here for about 20 years, he even stopped asking if I thought I would
remain.
Not so another relative, who every time I see her during a visit to the States
always asks me the same question: "So tell me, do you think you'll stay in
Israel?"
I'm always a bit put off by that question, never sure about its intended
meaning, or why it's even asked. If someone, for instance, moved from Denver to
Baltimore and lived there for 25 years, would anyone ask if he intended on
staying or whether he would be "coming home" soon? In a best-case scenario there
is a hidden put-down in the query, as if to say, "Okay, now that you got that
nutty Israel stuff out of your system, when are you coming back to the real
world?" In the worst-case scenario the question masks a subliminal hope that
you'll answer, "I'll be leaving Israel soon," to justify the fact that the asker
- if Jewish - never bothered to come.
"Well, let's see," I said somewhat impatiently last November, "I got me a wife,
four Israeli kids, a mortgage, a shekel-linked pension plan, a permanent seat in
shul, house plants and I've lived in Israel now longer than I've lived in the
States. Yup, chances are I'm gonna stay."
But there at the gas station, with humous dripping down my elbow from a hole in
my pita, I finally understood and empathized with those anti-aliya parents and
relatives. No, I don't justify them - I still think it mighty selfish to put
their needs before the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the entire Jewish people
from time immemorial. But I could finally empathize.
Sitting there, looking at my daughter, I thought how crushed I would be if she
ever decided to get up some day and replant herself in a foreign land thousands
of miles away. Sure, I would want what was best for her - or at least
theoretically I would want what was best for her - but I would always anguish
over why what's best for her couldn't also be what's best for me.
Sure I would think it noble for her to want to live out her principles - or at
least I hope I would think that way - but I would obviously feel pain,
especially if her moving meant depriving me of having her a car-ride away, of
being able to watch her children grow up.
THOSE THOUGHTS intruded upon me because in a month this daughter, child number
two of four, will be leaving home.
It seems like only yesterday The Wife and I attended one of my daughter's
birthday parties in nursery school, squeezing into those too-small chairs and
watching her do a hula hoop dance. It seems only yesterday she put her tiny hand
in mine, and I bent one of her trusting fingers at the knuckle until she yelped
in pain. And now, presto, here she was sitting across from me - sans hula hoop,
but fingers miraculously still intact - soon to be setting out on her own.
Finally I could empathize with the pain of parents watching as their kids flew
12-hours away to Israel to forge a new life. For I was feeling an echo of that
pain, and all I was doing was sending my daughter off in a few weeks time to do
her national service - 90 minutes away to Afula.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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GRAPHIC: Cartoon (Credit: Pepe Fainberg)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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The Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2009 Sunday
Who's physically challenged?
BYLINE: ANN GOLDBERG
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 394 words
HIGHLIGHT: Suddenly, she was whizzing past us, her hands flying over those large
wheels, her backpack tied to the back of her chair
She rolled past me so fast that at first I didn't realize who or what she was.
The wheelchairs I'm used to seeing are usually cumbersome and slow moving and
need someone to push them, but this young lady had the equivalent of a sports
wheelchair, a kind of small chair on large wheels, which she projected forward
with her hands at incredible speed.
I was in the boarding line at Ben-Gurion Airport, waiting to board the plane to
London, when this young lady, in her mid 20s I would guess, flew past us all. As
the rest of us slowly moved forward and eventually were allowed to embark on the
plane, she remained with the check-in crew laughing and joking.
I was trying to stuff my carry-on bag into the hatch above my seat when
suddenly, there she was sliding her legless body along the narrow aisle,
propelling herself along with her hands. Surprisingly she wasn't allocated an
aisle seat but was in the middle, and grabbing hold of the armrests she flipped
her body agilely over the outer seat and the startled passenger sitting there
and plopped into the middle seat assigned to her.
She introduced herself to her startled neighbors as the flight attendant took
her dismantled sports chair and put it at the back of the plane. Sitting behind
her for the duration of the flight I was aware of her warm voice, happy and
friendly demeanor and natural laughter which immediately endeared her to her
travel companions. She was discussing all the places she wanted to see and visit
in England, and no one doubted for one moment that she'd manage it all.
A quick word in the flight attendant's ear and the aisle was cleared so she
could slide at lightening speed to the rest room unassisted, and back again.
We disembarked at London's Heathrow Airport and wound our long way along the
interminable walkway to the luggage pick-up point. Suddenly, there was a rush of
wind and there she was whizzing past us, her hands flying over those large
wheels, her backpack tied to the back of her chair.
She waved to us all, her new friends, and was off in the distance way ahead of
us.
I couldn't help smiling to myself. In normal terminology she was handicapped or
physically challenged. But in terms of her attitude and mobility, compared to us
schlepping along behind her, it was hard to think of her as such. She seemed
happy, agile and unencumbered.
And I bet she had a great vacation.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2009 Sunday
Letters
BYLINE: Yechiel Aaron, Helen Simpson, Eva Por, Ari Weitzner, Jill S. Crollick,
Trevor Davis, Sally Shaw
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1193 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
On coming together
Sir, - Deepest prayers to the Sofer family on the tragic death of their
three-year-old daughter in Jerusalem ("Little girl dies after falling into
Jerusalem manhole filled with toxic gas," July 23).
You reported that a "haredi" Jew jumped out of his car and into the four-meter
manhole opening to try and rescue the young girl; and that he himself was now in
the hospital in critical condition.
Why report that he is "haredi"? Did he check out the religious beliefs of the
baby sister, or the upbringing of the little girl before he jumped in and risked
his own life? A man tried to save a little girl. Period.
Some people we call haredi have been violently protesting, not the entire haredi
community. The majority of these people are out every day living their lives and
trying to help others.
I pray this little girl's death can be the tragic lesson we need. Next week we
mark the anniversary of the destruction of both the First and Second Temple.
This was our punishment mainly because of the terrible way one Jew treated
another.
Maybe if we can come together as a people, we can bring a tiny bit of comfort to
the Sofer family.
YECHIEL AARON
Hashmonaim
Sir, - Re the tragic death of Rachel Sofer: If there was an open manhole cover
in my area, I would ask a passerby to help me close it.
HELEN SIMPSON
Jerusalem
They weren't there? So what
Sir, - As David Grossman, Amos Oz, Yonatan Gefen and Naomi Chazan represent the
Left and Meretz, the headline of your item should have read "Public figures from
the Left demand Cast Lead probe" (July 23). It seems to make no difference to
them that the soldiers in the Breaking the Silence testimony were quoting
hearsay. Anything to undermine the IDF and Israel.
EVA POR
Haifa
Bikinis in Mea She'arim?
Sir, - Re "Segregated buses" (July 22): I watched a video recently on your
website about a protest against separate seating on haredi bus lines. Yet not
one haredi woman was at the protest. Why do these protesters care about how the
sexes treat one another in the haredi community? Why do they think they need to
protect the haredi women from themselves?
I am disgusted by the haredi riots and the haredi refusal to serve in the army,
as that affects their fellow Israelis. But how haredim sit among themselves is a
private matter, and they don't need outsiders explaining to them how prejudiced
and backward they are.
According to the logic of the protesters, bikini-clad women should have every
right to stroll in Mea She'arim - after all, why should the haredim have the
right to decide who is fit to appear in their neighborhood?
Reasonableness informs us that every community should have some latitude
regarding the conduct in its neighborhood, whether on the street or on a bus.
This battle is ridiculous and counterproductive.
ARI WEITZNER
New York
MSP's helpless victims
Sir, - I appreciated your article explaining the difficulties with diagnosing,
treating and prosecuting episodes of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy ("Munchausen
Syndrome by Proxy is almost impossible to diagnose and cannot be treated, says
psychiatrist," July 22). The rarity of the disorder and the extreme difficulty
of diagnosis and treatment make it a doctor's nightmare and the basis of scripts
that might appear on Medical Center, ER, or House.
But the overriding issue is that the individual suffering at the hand of the
person with MSP is a helpless victim who must be protected at all costs.
As an associate professor of clinical dermatology in the State University of New
York system, during a hospital consultation I made the diagnosis of MSP in a
two-year-old who had been admitted for a skin lesion with no other symptoms. It
was evident to me that there was no natural disease process that could present
in the manner this skin lesion did: It was likely due to material injected under
the skin.
Unfortunately, I could not unequivocally tell the pediatricians that the mother
was doing this to the child as there was no proof. The surgeons felt obligated
to treat for necrotizing fasciitis (better known in the media as "flesh-eating
bacteria"). Despite the lack of other symptoms expected in necrotizing
fasciitis, they proceeded to perform aggressive surgical intervention.
Two weeks later, in the plastic surgeon's office for repair of the mutilating
surgical treatment, the two-year- old - a delightful, interactive child - died
of the "mysterious disease" she had while in the bathroom, accompanied by her
mother.
Several years later, the medical examiner told me that all the information about
MSP had been in the patient's chart, but the hospital physicians, and then the
authorities, were unable to act because of lack of proof acceptable for
prosecution.
Ultimately, however, when the woman was at term with her second child, she was
maneuvered into a local emergency room, where the authorities gave her a choice:
Relinquish the child for adoption, or be prosecuted and face prison for murder.
The child was relinquished, and I have no information about the woman having any
more children.
After more than 15 years, a week does not go by without my seeing that
two-year-old in my mind's eye. The victims of MSP must be protected.
JILL S. CROLLICK, MD
Jerusalem
Jewish ayatollahs
Sir, - The JFS experience is nothing new ("The JFS lesson," Editorial, July 22).
My own family encountered such coercive techniques back in the 60s, when my
brother applied to Yeshiva University.
At the interview, he was told that to be accepted he would have to adopt an
Orthodox lifestyle, to which he agreed. But when they said that his family would
have to do likewise, he told them that such an absurd demand was unacceptable,
and walked out.
He got his degree elsewhere, and to this day is a typical secular Jew. So what
exactly did YU profit by that?
Here is the answer: When my parents (justifiably) bragged about their son's
integrity to a friend, they were told: "He could have lied. You don't know how
many YU students did." My father replied that we were not prepared to so.
And sure enough, riding on the New York subway one Saturday, my mother met the
mother of a Yeshiva University student. The woman begged my mom not to tell a
soul, and my mother assured her that it was none of her business, and that if
the YU authorities wanted to catch her at it, they would have to drive to her
house on "Shabbes" and follow her onto the train.
This dreadful treatment of so many sincere converts is beyond disgraceful. All
these Jewish ayatollahs here and abroad would do better spending time in trying
to make Jewish religious life more palatable for the vast majority.
For my part, anyone willing to tie his or her life and future to our
long-suffering, insanely persecuted, stiff- necked, uncompromising band of
loonies should be welcomed with open arms (and get what they deserve).
TREVOR DAVIS
Asseret
Some don't like it hot
Sir, - Summertime and the livin' ain't so easy if one doesn't have an
airconditioner.
On the IBA news, the weather always seems to be 30¡C! Other news channels quote
temperatures varying between 33¡ and 35¡ for this area.
However, whatever the figure is, to quote an old musical song, "Its Too Darn
Hot!"
SALLY SHAW , Kfar Saba
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The Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2009 Sunday
Strange estrangement
BYLINE: LIAT COLLINS
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 985 words
HIGHLIGHT: MY WORD. When piety meets its match in Jerusalem, something goes up
in flames. First published in the International Edition of July 24, 2009.
There is a well-known psychiatric condition known as the Jerusalem Syndrome
which affects certain visitors to the Israeli capital who lose themselves in the
nonphysical sense, hear voices the other tourists don't hear and become
convinced they are the reincarnation of some biblical character.
Lately, those of us who live here - and are driven crazy in the less literal
sense of the word - have been learning more than we really wanted to know about
another syndrome, Munchausen-by-proxy, a condition in which a parent (nearly
always the mother) constantly seeks medical care for a child or even tries to
make a child sick as a means of getting attention.
The case that grabbed the headlines - although it was the picture that spoke
loudest - concerned a woman from Jerusalem's zealous Toldot Aharon
ultra-Orthodox community, who is suspected of starving and abusing her
three-year-old son. He apparently made a miraculous recovery as soon as she was
barred from his bedside (where, according to the police and officials at
Hadassah University Hospital, she was removing his feeding tube whenever she
could, to make sure he didn't gain weight.)
Most people I know feel tremendous pity for the child - who resembled a starving
African refugee in a disease- ridden camp - and even a bit sorry for the
evidently disturbed mother.
That's very different from turning her into the victim.
Nearly all the ultra-Orthodox I come in contact with, I meet due to my work or
theirs (yes, they do work). There are also a few ultra-Orthodox Jews in my
neighborhood - people willing for their offspring to grow up seeing that there
are Jews of all types, who wear all sorts of clothing, and have sometimes
greatly different lifestyles.
Toldot Aharon, on the other hand, along with other residents of the strictly
ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods like Mea She'arim and Geula and parts of Ramat Beit
Shemesh, rarely come in contact with anyone outside their own community.
This not-so-splendid isolation comes with a price. Whoever said cleanliness is
next to godliness has not walked through the streets of Mea She'arim -
particularly after a demonstration. And there have been plenty of those lately,
as if the Lag Ba'omer bonfires in May sparked a desire for more pyrotechnics
that can be satisfied only by torching huge garbage dumpsters - and then
attacking the police, firemen and city officials who are left to clean up the
mess.
The initial spark this year came from the mayor's decision to open a parking lot
on Shabbat. This quickly became a burning issue with the inevitable riots and
tires and trash cans set alight.
By the time the Munchausen mother case came around, the smoke had got into the
residents' eyes and stopped them from seeing the greater picture. While the
secular, traditional and Orthodox saw a sick mother who'd harmed her own child,
Toldot Aharon, Satmar, Neturei Karta and other sects saw an attack on a pious
woman and a way of life.
Everybody also had in mind what has become known as the Taliban Mom affair,
named for her custom of covering her entire head and body, burka-style. The
Jerusalem District Court on July 19 found the woman guilty of severely abusing
her children.
Most saw this as another case of piousness gone hellishly wrong. The minority
perceived it, again, as an attack on a modest mother raising her children the
way she saw fit.
But it was the Munchausen mother, her swollen belly poignantly evident as she
hid her face behind a book of psalms in court, who became the cause celebre.
Her neighbors portrayed her as the innocent victim of some Zionist conspiracy,
an image much easier to convey in a community which does not have television,
radio, or Internet and whose restricted press won't even show pictures of women
or mention the word "pregnancy."
The woman herself has, it seems, tried to avoid a psychiatric examination.
Probably she is less concerned at what a doctor might find than fearful of the
repercussions for her children when they need to find a shidduch. A mother who
is being victimized by the state is much less of a burden than one diagnosed as
suffering from a mental disorder when you need to find a good match.
In the background lurks the calls for segregated bus lines, in which the women
would sit at the back, and the men in the front. Perhaps more than the other
issues, this shows how the bumpy road to hell can be paved with good (or at
least devout) intentions.
Channel 1 last week interviewed some ultra-Orthodox women who call themselves
feminist and fiercely support gender-separated seating: "The Queen of England
always sits at the back of a vehicle, doesn't she?" said one in what she clearly
thought was a clinching argument.
The women also claimed that their children grow up separated girls from boys
from the cradle on. This would explain why the shidduch system is so important:
There is no opportunity for boy to meet girl, so marriages have to be arranged.
I wonder what these women would make of the scene I witnessed on my local bus
recently when a guy lent over and asked a young woman if he could borrow her
prayer book. It was an unusual pick-up line (and apparently ineffective, as she
handed it over with a roll of her eyes that said his prayers were not about to
be answered.) It was a very Jerusalem picture.
I've never quite fathomed the davening-on-the-bus phenomenon which seems to have
spread from route to route in the city. Is piety catchy?
Perhaps it's because Jerusalemites enjoy unique advantages when it comes to
determining which direction to turn to face the Temple Mount. Or it could be
just another means of balancing religious practice with the demands of a modern
lifestyle (and Jerusalem's traffic jams, which can test faith and patience).
As we approach Tisha Be'av, maybe we should all be looking towards the site
where the two Temples fell and think about where we're heading. And then stop to
think how to stop the collision.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: 'Pashkavilim' (posters) in Mea She'arim describe the case of the
mother arrested for abusing her child as 'blood libel.' (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: Roberta Cohen, K. Hallgren
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 365 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
They have eyes
but they see not
I came to Jerusalem with many goals in mind, particularly to pray at the Kotel.
Due to the fact that I am blind, I was traveling with my guide dog. On July 7 as
I approached the Kotel, the female haredi supervisor started to scream at me,
"Get out of here! This is no place for a dog." I tried to explain to her that I
was blind and that my dog was a seeing-eye dog. She would not listen and called
a policeman to throw me out. He said, "According to the law, you are allowed to
be here."
In 1994 a law was passed in the Knesset under the jurisdiction of the Labor and
Welfare Ministry and the Health Ministry that a guide dog is permitted with the
blind person in any public place in Israel whether it's religious or secular. As
I went to the wall to pray, the woman continued to yell at me. I told her that
if she could go to pray without her eyes, I would go without my dog. Are some of
the workers at the Kotel going too far by discriminating against a blind person?
Roberta Cohen
Arad
A blessing in disguise
The last thing Jerusalem needs is more luxury apartments, especially for rich
Diaspora Jews who only plan to make Israel their second home. ("Matters of
perspective," July 10). Miami-based Nof Zion sales representative Gita Galbut
says that "every single Jew needs to own something in Israel," yet there isn't
enough affordable housing in Jerusalem for us Jews who live here full time to
own something in Israel. That said, how does Jerusalem city council member Meir
Magalit get off saying that east Jerusalem should be Judenfree? Plenty of Arabs
from east Jerusalem have moved to traditionally Jewish parts of town, but I
doubt Margalit would say that those areas should be free of Arabs. From what
I've heard, most Arabs in east Jerusalem don't want to be part of a Palestinian
state and give up their rights in Israel. But what do they think will happen if
east Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state? If anything, the
presence of Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem could turn out to be a
blessing for the Arabs by making it less likely they will be forced to live
under Palestinian rule as part of a peace deal.
K. Hallgren, Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
Mailbag
BYLINE: Edith Nagall, Valentina Monhajt, Judy Goldin, Metro staff
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 31
LENGTH: 214 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
No news here
Re: Something rotten in Yad Binyamin (Letters to the editor, July 17)
Dear editor,
Dr. Leci is appalled to learn that the government re- housed 120 refugee
families from Gush Katif adjacent to a malfunctioning sewage works designed for
a maximum of 40,000 residents' waste, but attempting to treat waste from 70,000
that emits toxic gas.
I would submit that the Gush Katif families are only being treated in a
continuation of the way they were treated while being forcibly expelled from
their homes and businesses in order to appease a world that refuses to accept
our right to Eretz Yisrael.
So, Dr. Leci, nothing new there.
Edith Ognall,
Netanya
Salty tears
Dear editor,
There is one peculiar faucet at the Lido Beach in Ashdod that emits a strange
crying sound every time I open it to slightly rinse my sand-covered feet.
For some weeks I have been trying to guess what the faucet's message to me could
be. And now I have the answer: "Save water, don't abuse me."
This is not the figment of my imagination. The faucet really makes sounds.
Valentina Monhajt,
Ashdod
From a puzzled reader
Dear editor,
Where has the children's puzzle page gone? I enjoyed doing them.
Judy Goldin,
Kiryat Ono
Editors respond: Due to personnel changes, the children's page has been
discontinued for the time being.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: I. Kemp, Herbert Bishko, Maurice Picow, Judith Nusbaum
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 619 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Halimi could've been British
Sir, - Re Brett Kline's "This is France" (Cover Story, July 17): It could be the
UK, or any other EU country except that it just has not happened to the same
degree yet. But the potential is certainly there.
I. KEMP
Nahariya
The Arabs' real 'nakba'
Sir, - Week after week, Sarah Honig brings us carefully crafted, beautifully
written articles that are historically informative - a pleasure to read.
"Self-exiled by guilt" (July 17) was surely one of her finest; it positively
glowed!
Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, who served with the British during the Mandate
period, gives credence to Ms. Honig's's words on the "fraudulent Palestinian
refugee narrative." On page 271 of his Middle East Diary 1917-1956,
Meinertzhagen writes: "At the outbreak of hostilities in 1948, Israel implored
the Arabs of Palestine to stay where they were; a few did so and are now
prosperous and contented communities. But the Mufti of Jerusalem broadcast from
Gaza advice to the Arabs of Palestine to 'clear out' and leave the field open
for the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine. On at least two occasions British
Administration Officers advised the Arabs to go so that military invasion forces
could have a clear field. In both cases Arabs were told that they would return
within a week and not only get their own property back but also the property of
the Jews." Quite simply, the mufti was mistaken, and for the Arabs that is their
real "nakba."
HERBERT BISHKO
Tel Aviv
Those who just... vanish
Sir, - What David Brinn described in "Without a trace" (July 10) should not be
considered unusual for a country Israel's size, especially taking everything
that goes on here into account, including: murder for "nationalistic reasons";
underworld criminal activities; "white slavery" (for prostitution and other
illegal activities. Also, there are people who, for a variety of reasons, simply
"disappear" on their own account.
Like many people in Israel during the mid 1990s, I still remember Adi Ya'akobi's
disappearance, and used to tell my own children to be very careful and not
hitchhike or accept rides with people they didn't know. Nowadays, the situation
is even more worrisome, especially due to the increase in alcohol and drugs by
young people, who comprise a high percentage of the 320,000 Israelis said to be
using drugs.
Like Brinn notes, it's very easy to kill someone and dispose of the body in a
country with such a varied topography as Israel's - including mountains, desert
regions, forests and literally hundreds of caves and abandoned water cisterns.
Had the girlfriend of Dana Bennet's alleged killer not revealed what she knew,
her body might still not have been discovered. As the old saying goes: "Dead men
(and women) tell no tales" - only live ones do!
MAURICE PICOW
Netanya
The donor who saved my life
Sir, - I was delighted to read of Ruth Shlossman's selfless gift of her kidney
to save another's life (Arrivals, July 17). Almost four years ago, while I was
on dialysis, I found an altruistic donor by surfing the the Web. I brought my
potential donor to Israel from Australia, we underwent extensive testing, mental
and physical, and the transplant was successfully performed in Beilinson
Hospital. Martin and I have been in frequent contact ever since.
Shlossman expressed an interest in educating others to donate kidneys. Since my
transplant, I have been involved with both ADI and HODS, Halachic Organ Donor
Society, organizing educational seminars, presenting lectures, taking video
interviews of patients, and working on a one- to-one basis advising people how
to search the Web for a donor. I believe Ruth Shlossman and I might work well
together to save lives.
JUDITH NUSBAUM, Rishon Lezion
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The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
Human decency
BYLINE: NAOMI CHAZAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 1244 words
HIGHLIGHT: Critical Currents. The four main components of the current campaign
against the human rights community mask a fundamental unwillingness to come to
terms with abuses of human rights
If the self-appointed watchdogs of human rights organizations are to be
believed, activism on behalf of basic freedoms in Israel and the territories
under its control is anathema. Advocates of civil rights and individual dignity
are charged with everything from sloppiness and misrepresentation to gross
political bias and outright enmity.
The indiscriminate campaign against all such organizations also encompasses our
struggling human rights community. Here, as elsewhere, this family of civil
society associations does not expect to win any popularity contests. It does,
however, deserve to be treated fairly and its products seriously discussed
precisely because - with all due respect to its critics - its existence is and
will continue to be the foremost guarantee of the country's democratic values.
The current assault on local as well as international human rights organizations
follows a distinct, four-pronged format. The first - and by far the most
disingenuous - tool focuses on the motives of those engaged in human rights
activities. Major international human rights organizations are accused of being
rabidly anti-Israel. Local groups, whether they deal exclusively with the rights
of Palestinians in the occupied territories, with the status of the Arab
minority or with a broad spectrum of civil rights in the country as a whole are
at best dubbed as leftist (in the pejorative sense) or worse as traitors.
Either through thinly veiled innuendos or directly, they are denigrated for
purportedly undermining Israel's integrity and attempting to impugn its
morality. Their loyalty is questioned and their rhetoric is seen as a cover for
a new kind of "silent warfare" against the state. By disparaging the motives of
these messengers, so this reasoning goes, it is possible to dismiss their
message.
ISRAELI HUMAN rights activists, however, are prompted by motives that diverge
dramatically from those ascribed to them by their detractors. Drawing on their
Jewish heritage and on the principles ensconced in the vision of the country's
founders, they are committed to the protection of human values and to an
elementary sense of human decency - one which requires that every individual be
treated with the same respect they demand for themselves.
Oftentimes, uncovering injustices and highlighting violations of human rights
underline systemic abuses that cause extreme discomfort in official circles. But
the purpose of bringing these into the open is to increase public sensitivities,
to promote open debate and to expedite corrective action. This is especially
true of the spate of reports dealing with the attack on Gaza earlier this year.
If anything - far from being propelled by political motives - many of those
involved in human rights work have discovered that their political positions
have actually been shaped by their work rather than the reverse. They continue
to believe that - if only they can permeate the indifference of the public and
the disdain of policy makers - they can make this into a better place, one that
stands up to binding Jewish and universal measures. This quest for a decent
country is probably the most pro-Israel act imaginable; it constitutes an
undeniable demonstration of faith in its underlying values and its guiding
norms.
The second instrument of the anti-human rights lobby is more personal in nature:
It centers unabashedly on the ad hominem - on who is involved in the protection
of individual liberties and on those who give them support. This involves the
amassing and distribution of long lists of individual activists and their
organizational connections. It also entails detailing sources of funding,
intimating that the European Union, its member states and certain foundations
are by their very being suspect, and therefore their Israeli recipients are by
extension tainted.
Funding for human rights work here comes from many local as well as foreign
backers. The list of these donors is readily available to the public, something
that cannot be said of those leading the campaign against these groups, who lack
a similar transparency. This guilt by association attack against the local human
rights community is hardly a way of grappling with the veracity of its reports.
The third prong of the campaign against these organizations deals not with why
they engage in this work or with whom, but with how they do so. The periodic
publications of key groups are usually debunked a priori as unbalanced because
they focus only on Israeli violations. This critique is both facile and
misleading: Israeli civil and human rights work is aimed precisely at
ameliorating problems within the country's own purview.
When this argument can no longer be sustained, attention then turns to the
documentation presented by the various groups. This is dissected - as it should
be - and then usually discarded as unprofessional because it is sometimes
anecdotal, uncorroborated or unsigned. Most of the reports of human rights
organizations here, however, stand up to the most exacting standards. A minority
are not as systematic as one would desire or, because of the apparent anonymity
of the witnesses (whose names are withheld to provide protection), difficult to
validate. But even in these cases, this does not mean that the evidence they
bring is false or that their results can be summarily disregarded.
The fourth weapon of the assault on human rights groups centers on their impact.
Intriguingly, the influence of their work is measured in political rather than
in policy terms. The monitors complain that the publication of Israeli
violations inevitably harms the country's reputation and standing. In the
present era, external actors have their own independent data-gathering sources
and are perfectly capable of perusing the local press and translating Hebrew
publications. It is not the dissemination of any particular report that causes
damage, but the policies that they describe. This is something that Israel can
prevent or alter. In fact, the damage done by the constant vilification of the
human rights community may outweigh the inconvenience caused by any given
report.
THE FOUR MAIN components of the current campaign against the human rights
community mask a fundamental unwillingness to come to terms with abuses of human
rights. At times, to avoid any constructive debate, these are juxtaposed to
those of Israel's worst enemies, as if by proving that Israelis have undergone
more, one exonerates one's own actions. Alternatively, the victims are blamed
for their own distress. Unfortunately, what is palpably lacking is any
compassion for the other - the most basic indication of an ethical commitment to
a uniform standard of human behavior, especially in conflict situations. In this
respect, the anti-human rights campaign is morally bankrupt. It has yet to
evince concern for the violation of one human right or to demand protection of
any human liberty.
The watchdogs of human rights organizations, with their nonsubstantive approach
to the issues at hand, do Israel no good. Civil society groups, like
governments, must expect and even invite oversight. In turn, the self-
designated supervisors of their activities, if they indeed act in good faith,
should suggest ways to maximize the values of equality and respect for the
other. If they don't, they undercut the fundamental faith in human dignity,
which is not only the source of Israel's humanity but also the root of its very
existence.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: A soldier scuffles with an Israeli left-wing activist during a
pro-Palestinian protest in the village of Safa near the Judean settlement of Bat
Ayin on Saturday. (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
Molly Goldberg's unhappy epilogue
BYLINE: SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 895 words
HIGHLIGHT: In the Diaspora. When the Jews who ruled in television rendered their
own kind invisible
Decades before Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, a generation before Welcome
Back, Kotter and Brooklyn Bridge, American television had its first Jewish hit
and first Jewish star in the form of Molly Goldberg, the title character of a
popular sitcom. And even before The Goldbergs went onto TV in 1949, the
technology's infancy, the Bronx family flourished on radio.
Through the fictional Goldbergs, Jews were introduced to the broader nation with
unapologetic particularity. The plots of The Goldbergs included an on-air Seder
and a timely reference to Kristallnacht; the show took the comedian Menasha
Skulnick from the ghetto of Yiddish theater to a mass audience.
It was all the brainchild of Gertrude Berg, the creator, writer and star of the
show. Shattering barriers in the entertainment industry as both a woman and a
Jew, Berg wrote and acted in 12,000 episodes of The Goldbergs over its 30-year
lifespan. At one time, a national poll of the most-admired women in America
found her rated just behind Eleanor Roosevelt.
So you can understand precisely why the gifted director Aviva Kempner was drawn
to Berg as a subject. Following on two other nonfiction films about the Jewish
experience - Partisans of Vilna and The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg - she
has found in Berg another compelling and triumphant figure.
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, Kempner's newly-released and much-praised documentary,
presents Berg as the matriarch of the sitcom, the common ancestor to such later
Jewish television auteurs as Norman Lear and Gary David Goldberg. In the film,
Berg is extolled as "the Oprah of her day." Well, all that may be true as far as
it goes, and yet, I'm sorry to report, it falls short of being the whole story.
Molly Goldberg's epilogue was not a linear progression to the more recent Jewish
shows and characters on television today and in the recent past. Rather, the
demise of The Goldbergs led into decades when Jewish network executives (William
Paley, David Sarnoff) and creative artists (Oscar Katz, Carl Reiner, Sheldon
Leonard) all but eliminated Jews from prominence on prime-time TV, whether by
order or by submission.
TO FIND out this missing link in the Gertrude Berg story, you'd need to pick up
David Zurawik's trenchant book, The Jews of Prime Time. In it, the Baltimore
Sun's television critic reveals the timidity (or cynical commercialism) of Jews
who made their own creations Judenrein.
"From 1954, when The Goldbergs went off the air, to 1972, not one prime-time
network series - sitcom or drama - had a leading character who was identifiably
Jewish," Zurawik told me the other day. "Things absolutely didn't go along
smoothly after The Goldbergs. To suggest the door was open and everything was
fine is wrong. Instead, we got one of the most distressing patterns in American
popular culture."
Even the show that broke the self-imposed ban, Bridget Loves Bernie, was a very
qualified kind of success. It approvingly chronicled an interfaith marriage
between Jewish Bernie and Irish Catholic Bridget. Not until the 21st century,
when Charlotte converted for Harry on Sex in the City, did American television
present both a Jewish man and Jewish identity as attractive on their own terms.
Kempner's film only hints at two of the reasons for the lengthy absence of Jews
from on-tube visibility. In its final season, with television burgeoning into an
extraordinarily lucrative mass medium, Molly and family moved from their Tremont
walk-up into a vanilla suburb; her husband was speaking to the Rotary Club and
the actors playing her two children were gentiles. Here was a clear indication
of TV's direction: denuding ethnicity in pursuit of the greatest possible
audience and advertising market.
(The same thing happened over time with Lucille Ball. Out went her bilingual
Cuban-American husband Desi Arnaz in I Love Lucy - theirs was by some standards
a racially mixed marriage - and in came the generic suburbia of The Lucy Show.)
Then there was the political climate in which television's Jews were operating
under growing suspicion. During the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, Kempner's
film explains, the magazine Red Channels successfully smeared Phillip Loeb, who
played Molly's husband on the show, as a communist or fellow traveler. Despite
Berg's efforts to defend him, pressure from advertisers forced him from the show
and he was blacklisted. (His subsequent suicide provided the factual substance
behind Martin Ritt's feature film The Front.) CBS cancelled The Goldbergs as a
result, though the show later landed at competing NBC.
Gertrude Berg's daughter, Harriet Berg Schwartz, distilled the lesson well in a
letter to The New York Times shortly after William Paley's death in 1990. She
described him as "a man of shrewdness and intelligence, who was in the business
of giving the public not only what the public wanted but also what it was safe
to give it."
We all know the aphorism that a Jew is someone who can't take yes for an answer,
and so perhaps it's ethnically appropriate for me to resist the self-
congratulation of Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. But it also might be historically
correct to question the film's celebratory tone. Between the innovative and
confident Gertrude Berg and her artistic landsmen today, there lay too many
years when the Jewish role in television was to render their own kind invisible.
www.samuelfreedman.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: 3 photos: No Jewish character was a regular on TV in the two decades
between Molly Goldberg and the happily intermarried Bernie of 'Bridget Loves
Bernie.' Then came Seinfeld.
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1024 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
All these are my children
BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1189 words
HIGHLIGHT: Think Again. How could a mother of ten, whose only previous job was
running a nursery school in her home, create a state-of-the-art facility?
A woman I know, who runs a program in which 5,000 haredi woman study Torah
weekly over the phone with secular Israeli women, believes that haredi women
possess the power to transform secular-religious relations. That seems a bit
far-fetched these days, when rioters in Mea She'arim have succeeded in
blackening the image of all haredi Jews.
But I am convinced that if every Jew had met Lifsha Feldman, the Jewish world
would look very different. At her funeral two weeks ago, black-cowled Yerushalmi
women were seen hugging non-religious women. Cab drivers and great Torah
scholars stood side-by-side sobbing. Who was Lifsha Feldman, and what had she
done in her 45 years that drew thousands to her funeral?
Fourteen years ago, Lifsha gave birth to her ninth child, Ruchama, who was born
with a heart defect. During surgery to correct that defect, Ruchama was left
severely brain-damaged by a cerebral embolism. When the news finally sank in
that Ruchama's damage was irreversible, Lifsha resolved to do everything
possible to ensure that her daughter reach her full potential.
SHE STARTED by forming an organization to offer extra therapies within
Jerusalem's Alyn Children's Hospital. Three years later, she decided that was
not enough. She visited all the existing institutions and determined that none
were providing all the therapy she wanted for her daughter. So she decided to
open her own.
That decision was greeted with understandable scoffing. How could a mother of
ten, whose only previous job was running a nursery school in her home, with no
experience in special education, administration or fund- raising, create a
state-of-the-art facility?
MESHI (Machon Shikum Yeladim) opened its doors with 35 children. None of the
therapists were prepared to give up their previous jobs because none were
convinced it would survive the year. Today MESHI serves 180 children, and
employs an even larger number of staff.
I VISITED MESHI a few months ago. Every square inch of space is utilized, and
each room individualized. There are rooms for specific therapies - speech,
physical (large motor), and occupational (small motor) - and a "white room,"
which cost $70,000, to trigger sensory development. (The annual operating budget
is $2.5 million, above what the government covers, even before the cost of
building a new, expanded facility.)
Each child's therapeutic program is "sewn to fit the child," not dictated by the
number of therapies the government will cover. For some children, the goal is to
be able to hold a spoon or sit in a chair; others, whose disabilities are
primarily physical, not cognitive, will be successfully integrated into regular
schools.
The amount of equipment is mind-boggling. The exercise room has more treadmills
and elliptical machines than most gyms. In one room, I saw two
specially-designed vests like those used by astronauts in weightlessness. They
are used as part of a new therapy developed in Poland. Each costs several
thousand dollars. The oversized tricycle I watched a 12-year-old boy pedaling in
the school playground cost $4,000. In one classroom, each child has a specially
designed computer, which they use to communicate. One boy can only move his
cursor via a specially-rigged sensor attached to his ears. Ê
A visit to MESHI has a way of putting things in perspective. Irritated by your
child's failure to clean his room? Try imagining what it is like for parents who
have to physically assist a child weighing 60 pounds or more with every basic
activity. Yet a visit to MESHI is far from depressing. Ê
In every room - except those dedicated to particular therapies - there were six
to eight children and an almost equal number of adults - a teacher and her
assistant, together with various therapists and assistants to do the hands-on
therapies. The love and dedication evident on the faces of the young women
working with the children was reflected by the children.
The overwhelming impression I left MESHI with is how much goodness and caring
exists in the world. And it was Lifsha Feldman who set the tone. Every morning,
she stood outside greeting each transport to make sure the children were removed
gently. A neurologist related that Mrs. Feldman could discuss over 100 children
at a time with him, without a file in front of her, with as much clarity as if
she were discussing her own child.
A FEW YEARS AGO, Lifsha was interviewed on Kol Yisrael's From Morning Until
Evening program.ÊThere is something close to song in the calm and serenity with
which she discusses the challenges of raising a severely handicapped child.
"It is easier for a religious family to accept something like this - or at least
I thinkÊso - because they know that everything is directed from Above. Not just
directed, but directed for our benefit," she tells the interviewer. For that
reason, she and her husband never thought about bringing a malpractice suit.
These words are spoken without a trace of the bravado of someone trying to
convince herself. She and her family have been fortunate, she says, in that it
has been so easy to see the blessing from what happened to Ruchama: the hundreds
of children who have benefited from MESHI
It is not just the children of MESHI who have gained, she insists, but her own
family as well. The children have learned to be more sensitive because of
Ruchama, not to be embarrassed by disability, and that helping their sister and
parents is an expected part of life.
The interviewer asks what it is like to raise ten children. "Nifla (wonderful)"
is Lifsha's one word reply. She makes it sound easy. "Remember," she says, "they
are all different ages. They don't all come home at the same time. The younger
ones have their time when they come home. And the older children have theirs.
And when the older boys come home from yeshiva, they also have their time."
O.K., she admits, maybe a mother of ten has to invest a little bit more energy
and attention to make sure she doesn't miss anything with one of the children.
But when she describes her joy at having the whole family - children and
grandchildren - gathered around the Shabbos table, and the feeling of absence if
even one child is missing, she is utterly convincing.
Every time the interviewer cites some achievement of hers in MESHI or at home
with the word, "You," Lifsha reflexively responds "We," either in reference to
the staff of the school or her family. The interviewer asks at one point why
MESHI serves both religious and non-religious children. "Lama lo - Why not?"
Lifsha replies. "There is no educational reason to separate these children," she
says. "As long as the parents don't have a problem with a school run by haredim,
we don't have any problem either."
"She thought only about others," Lifsha's husband repeated over and over in his
eulogy. She gave her life for the children of MESHI. (She passed away suddenly
late at night only hours before a scheduled meeting with leading government
officials to discuss MESHI's budget deficits.) Her family is determined that the
children of MESHI will go on receiving everything they need to reach their full
potential - not least of all boundless love.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: 2 photos: MUSIC THERAPY at the MESHI Early Childhood Development
Center.
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1025 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
The Moor has done his work
BYLINE: SARAH HONIG
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 1163 words
HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack. Peace Now declares war on the family Roi Klein left
behind
Once upon not too many decades ago - before globalized media crassness took over
and when Israelis were way more erudite - folks around here freely quoted such
literati as German poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller. It wasn't considered
elitist or esoteric. So when the Palmah was disbanded and its altruists felt
they were used and then ungratefully discarded, they resorted to Schiller's
comment in his 1783 play Fiesco: "The Moor has done his work, the Moor may go."
The Palmahniks may well have overdramatized their sense of rejection. Their
undeniable voluntarism and sacrifice weren't discounted. They were hardly
castigated. They may not have gotten their political way, but they were the
establishment's adored sons, lauded in song and lore. And they rose high in its
hierarchy.
The same isn't true for the Palmahniks' latter-day heirs at Israel's frontlines
- both in pioneering and on the battlefield - those collectively and
(all-too-often) scornfully dubbed "settlers." If any allusion to Schiller's
dispensable Moor were appropriate, it certainly is in the case of decorated
war-hero Roi Klein. Rather than being the exception, his story is emblematic of
the thankless attitude to his entire milieu.
Roi selflessly gave his life for us all on July 26, 2006 - almost exactly three
years ago. Last week his name made the news again (admittedly not on all
airwaves or in all papers and definitely not in noticeable front-page
headlines). Peace Now had declared war on the family he left behind - his widow
Sarah and small sons Gilad and Yoav. As could only be expected, Peace Now won
handily. It could hardly be otherwise. The judicial dice are plainly loaded in
its favor.
BUT WE'RE getting ahead of ourselves. Let's first return to Roi's last day
during the Second Lebanon War. Maj. Klein, the 31-year-old deputy commander of
Golani Brigade's 51st battalion, suspected an ambush in the Hizbullah stronghold
of Bint Jbeil. His requests for backup, air support or a more offensive advance
were denied out of concern for Arab noncombatants who might be holed up there.
Roi's life was deemed expendable already at that stage. His senses were sharp.
His company was indeed waylaid by grenade-hurling terrorists in civilian garb.
One grenade landed directly near Roi. Shouting "Shema Yisrael" (Judaism's most
definitive affirmation of faith, recited twice daily and uttered when one
believes he is about to die), Roi jumped on the live grenade, saving his
comrades at lethal cost to his own body. Some fellow fighters say they heard him
calling out seconds before the fatal blast: "Tell my family I was killed."
Roi could have saved his own life but he cared more about the soldiers under his
command. The Ra'anana-raised officer had everything to live for. He left a young
wife and two kids at home, in a new neighborhood of Eli, near Ariel. The
neighborhood, where some 45 families reside - many of them of IDF officers - was
founded in 1998 on Israel's 50th birthday and was therefore suitably called
Hayovel (the jubilee).
PEACE NOW - always on hand to fan the flames of discord, its moniker
notwithstanding - considers Hayovel an illegal outpost. And always ready to
snitch and curry favor with assorted Obamas, Peace Now petitioned the High Court
to order the government to demolish many Hayovel homes, the Klein family's
included. Needless to say, the consistently left-leaning court didn't hesitate
to side with the left- wing petitioners.
Thus, 11 years after its birth, the court conferred illegitimacy upon a
neighborhood constructed with Jewish Agency backing, with infrastructure
prepared by the Defense Ministry and with full approval and support from the
first Netanyahu government. Nonetheless, red tape for beyond-the- Green-Line
projects is far more snarled than inside said Green Line. That's the Achilles'
heel for Hayovel and similar so-called unauthorized outposts. There, final
rubber-stamping is required from the highest political echelons and it
frequently comes post factum, after construction is already under way with
officialdom's endorsement.
Had Peace Now merely sought to alter this state of affairs from hereon, it could
only be accused of obstructionist bureaucratic pedantry. Peace Now, though, sets
its officious sights retroactively too. Contrary to prevalent perceptions, which
it avidly and deliberately fosters, it doesn't just target those it portrays as
wild- eyed zealots who skip madly from barren hill to barren hill with beat-up
trailers in tow. It targets normative families who worked hard to erect their
normative homes in normative neighborhoods. In Hayovel's case, many of these
families are military families, headed by idealistic officers who daily put
their lives on the line to defend the likes of the Peace Now leadership which
misses no opportunity to undercut them.
Thus Peace Now in effect posthumously turned Roi-the- hero into Klein-the-felon.
And he, in his grave, won't even know how he was dishonored. Sarah and the boys
will pay the full price for his crimes of loving the land, of willingness to
sacrifice life and limb for the Jewish state, of adhering to a creed upon which
Peace Now frowns and of living where Peace Now prohibits Jewish residence. The
family home is slated for demolition and it's not clear if even the most
sympathetic government can save it now that the inimical highest court in the
land has swung its ax.
Petitions are already circulating to save the dwelling and further legal steps
are afoot. But whether the house that Roi built is eventually spared somehow is
almost beside the point. That house is symbolic. There are others around it and
in other maligned settlements that are just as threatened and inhabited by
families just as dedicated as the Kleins.
BEFORE US is another installment in the nightmare mistreatment of Israel's best
sons and daughters. It's a smaller-scale reenactment of the massive travesty of
disengagement. The 9,000-plus expellees were Israel's most altruistic citizens.
Their devotion was repaid with a contemptuous kick-in-the-teeth, fully abetted
by our supposedly humanitarian above-reproach Supreme Court. Disengagement's
victims have still not been rehabilitated. Some of them, nevertheless,
subsequently fought and fell in the service of their country.
Yet their gallantry is anathema to Peace Now. Strictly toeing the Peace Now
line, the previous government nixed a monument to Roi in Eli, on the technical
grounds that the law which pertains to memorials doesn't apply in Judea and
Samaria. A proposed amendment to the law was vigorously opposed and defeated by
the Olmert-Livni coalition in the last Knesset.
Not only was Roi proverbially cast by ingrate Peace Now as Schiller's disposable
Moor, but even the service that he did render mustn't be acknowledged and
certainly not be commemorated in his own hometown. Nevertheless, solace can also
be found in another Schiller quote: "Our own heart, and not other men's opinions
of us, forms our true honor."
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Roi Klein could have saved his own life but he cared more about
the soldiers under his command.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1026 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
The terror bubble
BYLINE: SAUL SINGER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1115 words
HIGHLIGHT: Interesting Times. Smart power can still bring the mullahs down
"We are determined to channel the currents of change toward a world free of
violent extremism, nuclear weapons, global warming, poverty and abuses of human
rights and, above all, a world in which more people in more places can live up
to their God-given potential."
US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, July 15
"...the world of terrorists and other violent extremists - of insurgents and
IEDs - is with us for the long haul... Iran's going to have the capability to
deliver nuclear weapons to the people in their region a lot sooner than they're
going to have the capability to deliver them to us."
- US Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates, July 16
The Obama administration is torn between the audacity of hope and the morassity
of realism. One moment, the rhetoric soars, the other it tugs rudely down to
earth. In truth, every American government aims for that sweet spot between
idealism and pragmatism, regardless of the way its rhetoric leans. President
Barack Obama's determination to be ABB (anybody but Bush) has swung the pendulum
back toward an approach most reminiscent of that of Jimmy Carter. George W. Bush
was a "big stick" president; Obama, like Carter, seems more inclined to speak
loudly, or softly, and carry a small stick.
It doesn't have to be this way. It's possible to be ABB without becoming Carter,
whose failure in foreign policy led to his electoral defeat. The Obama team has
even articulated how this can be done. "We need a new mind-set about how America
will use its power to safeguard our nation [and] expand shared prosperity,"
Clinton said last week. The key, she said, was to use "smart power," which she
defined previously as using "the full range of tools at our disposal -
diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural - picking the
right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation."
Smart power sounds great, but where is it? Where has Obama used the slightest
bit of muscle of any kind? In Cairo, he said some things that Arabs are not used
to hearing, such as that it's wrong to "shoot rockets at sleeping children or to
blow up old women on a bus" and that is "not how moral authority is claimed;
that is how it is surrendered." More gently but still breaking new ground, he
said that the Arab-Israeli conflict "should no longer be used to distract the
people of Arab nations from other problems." In addition, Obama increased US
troop presence in Afghanistan and dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to Lebanon
just before the election there, sending a message that may have helped prevent a
Hizbullah victory.
In the main, however, Obama's idea of "smart power" seems to consist of
expecting less of friends and foes alike. Or as Clinton put it more positively,
"We've also begun to adopt a more flexible and pragmatic posture with our
partners... we will not tell our partners to take it or leave it, nor will we
insist that they're either with us or against us. In today's world, that's
global malpractice."
THE IRONY, of course, is that the one US partner that has not seemed to enjoy
such deferential treatment is Israel. It is simply unthinkable that the Obama
administration would get into such a public fight with any "partner" as it has
with Israel over settlements, down to the level of calling in the Israeli
ambassador to protest the building of a hotel in the eastern part of Jerusalem.
This may be an example of "smart power" in means, but it is "dumb power" in
effect. It takes a lot to turn off a columnist like Yoel Marcus of Ha'aretz, who
could not be more opposed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or more inclined
toward the new American president. Yet Marcus writes bitterly that Obama "has
spoken about us, but not to us." While Israeli prime ministers - especially
Netanyahu - are often blamed for any rift with the US, Obama has taken positions
so far outside the Israeli consensus that even the opposition has refused to
take his side.
Obama's use of dumb power has had a circle-the-wagons effect here, while gutting
the potential effect of any tough talk toward the Arab side. The Arab states
know they need to do nothing so long as the pressure is on Israel to deliver.
The smart power way would be to take the exact opposite approach: start by
concentrating public pressure on the Arab states to move toward Israel. Arab
normalization would create much more pressure on the Israeli government to
reciprocate than what the US is doing now.
The dire need for smart power, however, lies in the Iranian arena. Clinton sees
a world "free of violent extremism" and nuclear weapons; Gates one in which
terror is not only with us for the "long haul," but where Iran is "going to
have" nuclear weapons, spurring a regional nuclear arms race. It is in Teheran,
not in Jerusalem or Ramallah, where the choice between the two futures described
by Clinton and Gates will be determined.
MOST PEOPLE would bet on Gates's prediction. Yet the world Clinton describes
should not be dismissed as a utopian goal for the indefinite future, but one
toward which great strides can and must be made right now.
What needs to be understood is that the constellation of threats that face the
world now - primarily the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons - is no less of
a bubble than the one whose collapse just left the global economy in shambles.
Speculative bubbles look solid and endless when you are in them and then
disintegrate in the blink of an eye. The world of terror is such a
self-reinforcing yet fragile edifice.
The Green Revolution in Iran shows just how fundamentally weak the
terrormasters, as Michael Ledeen aptly calls them, are. This week's call by
former president Mohammad Khatami for a referendum "suggests a renewed
confidence within the opposition movement," says The New York Times. The same
newspaper, formerly a bastion of support for dialogue with Iran, now hopes that
the G-8 nations "mean it" when they threaten tough sanctions in September if
Iran doesn't back down. The mullahs' crackdown, while perhaps superficially
succeeding, has set off a wave of internal and external pressure that is just
beginning to gather force.
Next week, Gates will arrive here, reportedly to warn against preemptive
military action against Iran. The response from Jerusalem should be clear:
Better to stop the Iranian regime with your smart power, but the alternative is
not a nuclear Iran but Israeli military action. The further message should be
that now is not the time to grasp the mullahs' bloodied hand and relegitimize
their regime, but to refuse to recognize the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-led government
while offering to embrace any new government that abandons the road of
oppression, nukes and terror.
saul@jpost.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: SECRETARY OF STATE Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses students and
faculty members at India's Delhi University on Monday. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
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1027 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
Camp season
BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 1059 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit. Camp Koby is dedicated to the healing of bereaved
children
The parade of pets this morning at the summer camp in Dimona included a
funny-looking insect called a stick mantis, yellow cockatoos, a bright green
iguana, a duo of snakes and a bucket of bunnies. One of the middle-school lads
in the group of campers shakes his head and moves away as the mantis is passed
around. No one calls him a sissy. Ever so inconspicuously, one of the camp
counselors sits down beside him.
The black and white rodents called "panda bear hamsters" are less intimidating.
One of the hamsters has given birth to a litter of cubs, tiny bald, pink
creatures with closed eyes. Z, nine years old, gently strokes one, no larger
than his thumb. The cub wriggles in his palm. "Look, the babies are the cutest,"
he says to no one in particular.
The minuscule animals are nearly transparent. T can feel the minute hearts
beating in his hand. These cubs are among the smallest living beings that can be
caressed. They're so tiny and vulnerable, yet fully alive. The connection
between kids and this pulsing animal life is therapeutic, say proponents of pet
therapy. Interaction with animals for traumatized children is reputed to promote
physical and emotional well-being. It boosts self-esteem by allowing children to
master their fear. Animals are unpredictable and captivate their attention,
encouraging them to open up and talk.
Talking and reaching out for help are hard for Z, who has become withdrawn in
the little more than a year since his 16-year-old brother was murdered by a
terrorist in Jerusalem. All 120 boys in the camp have also lost a sister or
brother, mother or father. Theirs is a fraternity of sorrow.
WELCOME TO Camp Koby - Koby Mandell was murdered in May 2001. On a Jewish
version of a Tom Sawyer adventure, Koby, 13, and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran, 14,
cut eighth grade class one spring day to explore the wadi, the dry river bed in
their village of Tekoa. When they didn't come home at sunset, their parents
began to worry. Search teams were dispatched. The dreaded news of every loving
parent's worst nightmare came after sunrise. The boys' bodies had been found.
Terrorists had bludgeoned them to death.
To perpetuate Koby's memory and to prevent their grief from ripping them apart,
Koby's parents established a foundation in his name. Wrote Koby's mother Sherri
Mandell in her celebrated, poignant memoir, The Blessing of a Broken Heart,
"Koby has made us holy beggars, people who are begging to give, begging to
create love. This is his gift to us."
Camp Koby is dedicated to the healing of bereaved children. The thousands of
children whose loved ones were stolen from them by the nihilistic violence of
the second intifada: bus bombings, drive-by shootings and restaurant explosions.
In The Blessings of a Broken Heart, Mandell describes how their daughter Eliana
made friends with Shir, whose teenage brother was lured to his death by a
terrorist he'd met over the Internet. "Shir can tell Eliana her story because
Eliana has a matching atrocity. They can share and understand. They can be happy
together because they know that they're in the same situation. They don't feel
guilty when they're happy."
The camp's main campus is situated off the beaten path in a hotel in the desert
development town of Dimona. It has terrific facilities. Camp Koby offers three
10-day sessions - one for boys, one for girls and one mixed. (There are other
branches of Camp Koby that bring volunteers from the US to work with Ethiopian
immigrants, evacuees from Gush Katif and economically-challenged children in
Dimona.) Counselors - one for every four campers - are all volunteers, from
Israel and abroad. Seth Mandell has learned that there are numerous bereaved
children in Dimona, victims of terror and children or siblings of fallen
soldiers. They have been invited to join the camp program, too.
If you happened into the camp, you wouldn't guess it was a therapeutic setting.
There are kids playing basketball, a swimming pool, karate classes and sleepy
teenagers waking after a camp version of night maneuvers.
D and his friend M, both 14, live in different cities, but they've become close
friends in the five years they've attended Koby Camp. Both survived terror
attacks and lost family members. "Sometimes in our room we talk about the terror
attacks, but mostly it's just fun," says D.
Few Israeli camps have sleep-away options, so getting away is a treat for the
campers. It's also different because the usual sabra gruffness of speech,
borrowed from the military, is absent. Instead of arts and crafts, there's art
therapy. Music therapy replaces camp songs, and the animals aren't just part of
a nature corner but part of the empowerment program.
A YALE University undergraduate is following the kids around, making notes. He's
working on a study about the impact of the camp. "It's hard to quantify," admits
Koby's father Seth Mandell. Seth's a rabbi and former Hillel director in the US,
a believer in American-style summer camps as a place for self-expression and
personal growth. "We have so many anecdotal reports of positive experiences. Our
favorite measure is when kids who have been coming say that they don't think of
themselves as terror victims anymore."
Says the Camp Koby Web site: The terrorists will not win; a network of love and
sharing is created in the wake of the terrorists' attempts to destroy the people
of Israel.
The Mandells have broadened the definition of bereavement for possible
attendees. Children who have lost parents and siblings to car accidents and
disease can now attend Camp Koby. "Loss is loss," Seth says.
It's time for the pet therapist to gather the animals. Nine-year old Z gives the
hamster cub a final caress and reluctantly returns it to the cage for today.
Here's something you might not know about hamsters. Panda bear hamsters are
really called "Syrian hamsters." In 1930, pre-state Israeli zoologist Israel
Aharoni went out looking for hamsters and located a mother and cubs in the wild
of Aleppo, Syria. He carried them back to his lab at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, nursing them along the way. At the lab, some managed to burrow out
and populated the rocky hills. Others were exported. Nearly all pet hamsters in
the world are descended from them.
Like those hamsters, the network of love and sharing from a single Israeli camp
just might fan out and change the world.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: 'Shir can tell Eliana her story because Eliana has a matching
atrocity.'
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
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1028 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
A 'crisis' manipulated
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 765 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
Diplomacy involves an element of political manipulation - sometimes even
psychological warfare. We're now witnessing this in the US-Israel relationship.
The Obama administration has made a strategic decision to pressure Israel
pointedly, relentlessly and publicly, while, for now at least, asking little of
the Palestinians. The diversionary issue employed in this campaign is housing
construction over the Green Line.
Washington cannot realistically think that Israel is going to knuckle under and
stop building within strategic settlement blocs, or in post-'67 Jerusalem. So it
appears that the administration is engaging in confrontation for the sake of
confrontation. The object? To gain credibility with the Arab world in the belief
it will give them an incentive to make peace.
It's the same failed approach pursued by practically every administration since
1967 - only on hyper-drive. And this time, it's characterized by manipulatively
overplaying the chasm in the US-Israel relationship.
Thus US Defense Secretary Robert Gates ostentatiously warns against an Israeli
military strike on Iran's nuclear bomb-making facilities on the grounds that it
would undermine American interests. Yet, as the clock ticks, Washington still
hasn't quite figured out how to "engage" the mullahs and talk them out of
building a bomb.
The manipulation comes in various forms: word from the State Department that
talk of a cut in US aid to Israel over the settlement controversy is
"premature;" stories leaked to Israeli pundits sympathetic to the
administration's line - for example, that George Mitchell will be packing
binding timetables requiring Israeli concessions when next he arrives in our
region. Or claims that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack
Obama are headed for a "collision."
To heighten the sense of crisis, one newspaper here sympathetic to the
administration's approach claims that the IDF is poised to evacuate all
unauthorized West Bank outposts in one 24-hour blitz. The story is erroneous.
Further leaks claim that the Americans are planning an international peace
conference which will find Israel isolated, facing the "moderate" Arab world, an
unsympathetic Europe and an irritated administration. We're told that tensions
between Washington and Jerusalem are so bad that the White House will send a
"friendly face" (Dennis Ross) to accompany other ostensibly less sympathetic US
officials.
IN RESPONSE, Israel engages in its own, clumsy manipulation.
Responding to implicit threats of a cut in military aid, the IDF is said to be
"brainstorming" for the day when it will tell Washington what it can do with its
$3 billion, because Israel will purchase what it needs to survive from Vladimir
Putin's Russia.
And when our new ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, held his first overview
meeting at the State Department, it was Israeli officials who leaked the false
story that he had been "summoned" to hear US protests over Jewish housing
construction in east Jerusalem.
The Netanyahu government is wrong to think that exacerbating the perception of a
crisis in US-Israel relations is the wisest method of setting "red lines" for
future negotiations with the Palestinians. There must be better ways to point
out that the Shepherd Hotel is located in the geographically vital Sheikh Jarrah
section of the capital, a couple of bus stops from Hebrew University. Nor is
playing up bilateral tensions a smart way to encourage the pro-Israel community,
already signaling uneasiness over White House tactics, to speak out.
IT'S TOO bad that the Obama administration, which came to Washington promising
change, is going down the old, demonstrably counter-productive road of its
predecessors. It too fundamentally misreads the source of Arab reluctance to
make peace with Israel.
Washington acts as if both sides want the same thing: coexistence. But the Arabs
still reject the right of a Jewish state to live anywhere in their midst; still
favor demographically inundating Israel with Palestinian refugees and millions
of their descendents; and still insist Israel pull back to the hard-to-defend
1949 Armistice Lines.
Under these circumstances, the administration's one- sided pressure on Israel,
and its tepid response to Netanyahu's historic Bar-Ilan speech, entrenches Arab
intransigence.
It's an even bigger shame that the administration is expending so much energy on
an approach that actually reduces the prospects of a breakthrough - and that in
so doing, it is employing manipulative tactics that make mainstream Israelis
even more fearful of taking risks for peace.
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July 24, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: Stanley Cohen, Marchal Kaplan, Batya Berlinger, A.I. Goldberg, Chaim
Yitzchak Gold
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 868 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Requiem victory
Sir, - Re your letter criticizing the choice of Verdi's Requiem for a concert
given by the great La Scala Company in Tel Aviv last week ("Mass Miss," July
23): From every conceivable aspect, both musical and spiritual, this was an
eminently suitable choice. It expresses the composer's genius for transcending
mere notes to Divine inspiration and its text is largely, if not entirely, from
the Bible.
The references to another religion are incidental to its performance as a work
of music, and the association with the Terezin performance before an audience of
Nazis only emphasizes those performers' triumph over adversity. Even if they had
organized a cantata based on "Three Blind Mice" or "Frere Jacques," it would
have represented a triumph of human achievement over adversity of the most
horrific kind.
To be reminded of this is to celebrate that moment in space and time of victory
for the performers over their Nazi captors.
We don't need to agree with the words in order to appreciate the music.
STANLEY COHEN
Jerusalem
Limited sense
Sir, - Re "Israeli, German Jews plan to return Federal Crosses over award to
Langer" (July 22): Felicia Langer told the Post that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not
threaten to obliterate Israel.
We should be concerned for Ms. Langer, who must have severe trouble with her
sight and hearing since she is clearly unable to either read the innumerable
media accounts nor hear any of the numerous broadcasts quoting Ahmadinejad as
threatening to exterminate Israel, the "Zionist entity."
MARCHAL KAPLAN
Jerusalem
What's wrong with a little respect?
Sir, - David Breakstone wrote about posters in Jerusalem's haredi neighborhoods
that "warned the daughters of Israel to dress with a modesty that would
literally keep them covered from head to toe" ("When worlds collide," July 22).
Has he read those notices? They request sleeves below the elbow, dresses
covering the knees and a bit more, and closed necklines. Nowhere is there
anything about covering the head or wearing socks (at least on the posters I've
seen).
And what is wrong with requiring a little respect?
And those "explicit scenes of female sexuality" in the movie that your writer
mentions, do they really champion feminism? The Jewish view is that a woman is a
precious jewel not on display for the entire world to see. But not in the
Taliban way.
The Toldot Aharon sect does not accept money from the government. Such groups
are here because it is Eretz Israel and regard the political entity of the state
as just another ruling body like the Turks and the British. From what I
understand, they pay municipal taxes to the city, because they are residents
here, but do not take National Insurance benefits because that would recognize
the secular government as legitimate.
Mr. Breakstone says we are supposed to "repair the world we were responsible for
devastating." The fact that this country is basically secular, with, thankfully,
some institutions run by Torah, is the devastation. That many here consider
themselves "Israeli," as opposed to "Jewish"; that the average child in a
state-run school knows very little about our history before Herzl and many do
not even know the basics like the Shema prayer - that is the tragedy that leads
to sinat hinam, causeless hatred.
This has to be fixed.
BATYA BERLINGER
Jerusalem
It's the occupation
Sir, - Re "Segregated buses" (July 22): On Egged buses there is no clearly
delineated section that can be identified as the "back of the bus." Therefore
that designation can apply to any seat behind the first row.
Women should start sitting from the second row on and tell the men that is the
women's section, and they may sit in the first row. That would allow a maximum
of four males on the bus.
A.I. GOLDBERG
Hatzor Haglilit
About my 'saba,'
Harav Ze'ev Gold
Sir, - Thanks to David Geffen for the interesting and well-written Streetwise
column about my late grandfather ("Rehov Harav Ze'ev Gold, Jerusalem," UpFront,
July 17).
A few factual corrections: His position in San Francisco was much earlier than
his move to Eretz Yisrael. The description of the "friendship" with Rabbi Martin
Meyer was distorted. The teachers college referred to was Bais Midrash Lemorim
(TI) at Yeshiva College in New York, and not on the west coast.
His position in Boro Park was at "Shomrei Emunah." It commenced (not concluded)
during 1935, when he came to America for Mizrachi (in 1927 he was still living
in Eretz Yisrael).
His family moved to Eretz Yisrael in 1921, when my father was nine years old,
and not in 1935.
He fought for, founded and headed the Torah Education Department at the Jewish
Agency.
He was in America at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
when he spoke at what became the UN, and in other places, pleading the cause of
the State of Israel.
The 7th spot on the document was left blank until his return, when he signed it
- which explains why some photos show that blank space while others contain his
signature.
An addendum: My father was a student in the Hebron Yeshiva and was there during
the pogrom of 1929, when he was miraculously saved (there is much to be told
about that). He then went to the Mir Yeshiva in Poland.
CHAIM YITZCHAK GOLD, New York
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The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2009 Friday
How settlements became 'illegal'
BYLINE: MOSHE DANN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 965 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer, a former assistant professor of history, is a journalist.
In 1967, under attack, Israel struck back and conquered the Golan Heights from
Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea, Samaria and
Jerusalem (the West Bank) from Jordan. Israel had been threatened with a second
Holocaust, and few questioned its actions. No one spoke of a Palestinian state;
there was no "Palestinian people."
Many legal experts accepted Israel's right to "occupy" and settle its historic
homeland, because the areas had been illegally occupied by invading Arab
countries since 1948.
One organization, however - the International Committee of the Red Cross -
disagreed.
Meeting secretly in the early 1970s in Geneva, the ICRC determined that Israel
was in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Based on the Hague Convention,
GC IV was drawn up after World War II to protect innocent civilians and restrict
brutal occupations. Unilaterally, the ICRC turned it into a weapon to
delegitimize and demonize Israel.
As far as is known, the ICRC did not rely on any legal precedents; it made up
"the law."
Judge and jury, its decisions lacked the pretense of due process. Since all
decisions and protocols of the ICRC in this matter are closed, even the
identities of the people involved are secret. And there is no appeal. Without
transparency or judicial ethics, ICRC rulings became "international law." Its
condemnations of Israel provide the basis for accusing Israel of "illegal
occupation" of all territory conquered in 1967.
Although most of the international community, its NGOs and institutions accept
the authority of the ICRC and other institutions, such as the International
Court of Justice, as sole arbiters of what is "legal," or not, it's strange that
some Israeli politicians and jurists cannot defend Israel's legal claim to the
territories. And Israel's case is strong.
ADOPTED IN 1945, the UN Charter (Article 80) states: "...nothing in this Chapter
shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever
of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments
to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."
This means that the designation of "Palestine" as a "Jewish National Home,"
incorporated in the British Mandate and established by international agreements
adopted by the League of Nations and US Congress, guarantees Israel's sovereign
rights in this area. All Jewish settlement, therefore, was and is legal.
Two years later, amid growing civil war, the UN proposed a division of Palestine
between Jews and Arabs - changing the terms of the Mandate; the Jews accepted,
the Arabs launched a war of extermination.
When Britain ended the Mandate and left, the State of Israel was proclaimed and
local mobs who had been attacking Jews for years were joined by five Arab
armies. The armistice in 1949 - for Jews, independence, for Arabs, nakba
(tragedy) - did not result in a Palestinian state, because the Arabs did not
want it. Arab leaders never accepted Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state -
most refuse to do so today.
Pressured by Russia and the Arab states, the Security Council adopted Resolution
242, which spoke of Israel's military withdrawal from some - not all - of these
conquered territories in the context of a final peace agreement. The question of
sovereignty remained elusive and problematic.
Israel's political echelon and Supreme Court refrained from asserting full
sovereignty over the newly acquired areas but, in the absence of any reciprocal
gestures, agreed to allow Jews to return to Jerusalem's Old City and Gush
Etzion, where a flourishing group of settlements had been wiped out in 1947.
Striking a compromise, it allowed the building of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron,
where the Jewish community had been wiped out in Arab riots of 1929; Jews were
permitted to pray at the Cave of Machpela, an ancient building containing the
tombs of Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, for the first time in 700 years.
Although free to leave UNRWA refugee camps, with new opportunities and
challenges, Palestinians did not call for statehood or peace with Israel. The
PLO, which claimed to represent Palestinians, was dedicated to terrorism, not
nation-building.
FOR SOME, this is not a "legal" issue, but a moral one: Jews should not rule
over ("occupy") others. So Israel withdrew unilaterally from nearly all
"Palestinian" cities, towns and villages and turned over vast tracts of land to
the PA/PLO as part of the Oslo Accords in 1994 and a few years later in the Wye
and Hebron agreements.
When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, it became a bastion of Hamas. "Land
for peace" in reality means "land for terrorism."
Influenced by these events, incited by Islamists, encouraged by Israeli
concessions and seeking to undermine the state, Israeli Arabs identify as
"Palestinians," demanding an end to "Jewish occupation" and discrimination, and
the destruction of the state itself.
Others contend that "Israel's Jewish and democratic" nature will be threatened
if it continues to include large numbers of Arabs who are not loyal and do not
identify with the state. But nearly all "Palestinians" live under PA, not
Israeli rule. The dispute now, therefore, is over territory, not people.
Predictions of an "Arab demographic time bomb" have not proven realistic or
accurate. Moreover, allowing Arab residents full civil and humanitarian rights,
without political rights, as exist in most other countries, could be considered
in conjunction with resettling Arab "refugees" in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc.,
dismantling UNRWA camps and ending terrorism and incitement against Israel.
That a second (or third) Arab Palestinian state would be an existential threat
to Israel seems obvious. "Land for peace" has failed. Why then promote it?
moshedan@netvision.net.il
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July 24, 2009 Friday
Financing our own demonization
BYLINE: David Horovitz, with reporting by Ariel Zirulnik
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 1967 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editor's Notes
Day after day, the pages of this newspaper feature news and comment articles
detailing or asserting bias against Israel on the part of human rights groups,
the media, filmmakers, international governments and other global
opinion-shapers.
Last Wednesday, our lead front-page story reported that the government was
determined to fight back against NGOs that it felt misrepresent the country.
Referring to the recent fund-raising trip to Saudi Arabia by Human Rights Watch,
which two weeks earlier had issued a report blasting Israel's conduct in
Operation Cast Lead at the turn of the year, a spokesman for Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu declared bitterly, "A human rights organization raising money
in Saudi Arabia is like a women's rights group asking the Taliban for a
donation."
Another senior Israeli official vowed to "expose the inconsistencies... and
problematic use of questionable data" in the work of HRW, Amnesty International
and others.
A few days later, we quoted government officials explaining why Israel would not
be cooperating with Judge Richard Goldstone's UN inquiry into purported war
crimes in the course of the Israeli assault on Hamas - because, said the Foreign
Ministry, rejecting Goldstone's claims to the contrary, the inquiry was skewed
from the start, working from a mandate which guaranteed that the result would be
yet another exercise in UN-initiated, unwarranted Israel- bashing.
Israel-based human rights groups critical of Israel regularly provoke angry
reactions from officials in our pages for alleged disproportionate criticism of
Israel and for ostensibly acting against the interests of the state. One such
group, Breaking the Silence, which is funded in part by the British and Dutch
governments and the EU, last week presented a report containing anonymous
testimony asserting Israeli crimes during Operation Cast Lead. Israeli military
officials, in response, asserted that Breaking the Silence was not truly seeking
an investigation of alleged misdeeds, but rather that "the organization's real
motive was to slander the IDF."
We've recently carried reports of American Jewish filmmakers withdrawing from
the Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with a Palestinian-led international
campaign to boycott Israel, and of pro-Palestinian activists disrupting Israeli
cultural activities in the UK - persuading a theater in London to cancel an
Israeli event because of the participation of an IDF entertainment troupe, and
convincing a festival in Edinburgh to return sponsorship funding from the
Israeli Embassy.
We regularly feature columnists in these pages complaining, with greater and
lesser justification, about perceived anti-Israel bias in the foreign and
sometimes the local media - criticisms of newspapers, radio stations, TV
channels, Internet sites and documentary films.
CNN ignited a firestorm here when it gave more screen time to the mother of a
May 2002 suicide bomber than to the victims of the attack he carried out in
Petah Tikva in which an Israeli woman, Chen Keinan, lost both her mother and her
15-month-old daughter. The BBC is a frequent target of charges of bias. So, too,
Britain's Guardian daily, cited in an opinion piece in our pages this week as
standing on the cutting edge of a new wave of efforts to delegitimize our
country.
Official Israel has been grappling for years to counter what, often for good
reason, it regards as misrepresentation of Israel in print and on screen.
Coordinating bodies designed to ensure a rapid response to erroneous or
exaggerated breaking news of alleged Israeli misdeeds have come and gone, been
reconstituted, refined and generally found wanting. Media experts have been
called in to train spokespeople in more effectively conveying their message.
Whole departments in the Foreign Ministry, the army, the Justice Ministry and
beyond are devoted to trying to ensure Israel gets a fair break.
Under our last foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, great play was made of efforts to
entirely "rebrand" Israel. We didn't want the world to think of us as a war
zone, beset by shootings and bombings, as all-too-often documented on TV and in
the papers, but rather as the uniquely wonderful tourist destination we so often
can be. To graphically illustrate the point, the men's magazine Maxim was
invited to fly in for a photo shoot two years ago featuring female former
soldiers in, and largely out of, uniform.
Admirably, at this month's Jerusalem Film Festival, the showcase opening movie,
often a major crowd-pleasing international release in previous years, was
instead A Matter of Size - a gentle, understated, local comedic production. If
hardly an advertisement for Israel as world class tourist destination - it is
set in Ramle - it is emphatically an advertisement for Israel as a country of
normal human beings, with all the flaws and qualities of ordinary, decent people
everywhere.
Without wishing to give away much more than can be gauged on the poster, it
revolves around a self-effacing, under-employed middle-aged chef with an
overbearing mother and commitment problems, who is wrestling - literally - with
serious weight issues.
Panned by some critics, beloved by others, it offers nuanced glimpses of our
wider Israel - the feistiness of our society, class divides, homophobia,
changing attitudes from generation to generation. If you were to see it in a
cinema overseas, you'd feel at least an intermittent warm glow of appreciation,
a satisfaction that those in the seats around you, perhaps less familiar with
our country, were gaining a small insight into some of what makes us tick.
Unfortunately the same festival also featured an evening of sequenced short
films about Jerusalem - Jerusalem Moments - that contained just about every
imaginable one-sided, context-deficient, unbalanced misrepresentation of Israel
rolled into one nasty package, precisely the kind of skewed misportrayal so
gallingly common to our least fair-minded critics.
JERUSALEM MOMENTS was produced by Ir Amim, an Israeli non-profit and self-styled
"nonpartisan organization" that works, according to the Cinematheque program,
"toward an equitable and stable Jerusalem with an agreed political future." Its
seven shorts were the work of "seven young directors, Palestinian residents of
East Jerusalem and Israelis" who, the program said, "courageously confront the
delicate and charged issues and present personal and political points of view
about the complex reality in Jerusalem, between East and West."
But if that variety of Israeli, Palestinian, and, in one case, joint
Palestinian-Israeli filmmaking teams implied a range of theme and tone, perhaps
an examination of Jerusalem's problems from dramatically diverse and conflicting
perspectives, the opposite was the case. This was an exercise in the bludgeoning
documentation of Palestinian victimhood and of allegedly mindless Israeli
cruelty and aggression.
It began with a eulogy to the late PLO representative Faisal Husseini - who
happened to be cited by Likud Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor this week as
being the one Palestinian leader to have acknowledged that there could be no
"right of return" - and headed mainly downhill from there.
We got to meet a Shuafat refugee camp rap pack, one of whose members made a
casual lyrical reference to Israel's unexplained purported killing of a mother
and father. We saw footage of the complexities of travel into and across
Jerusalem, with a soundtrack that included the voice of a pregnant Palestinian
woman discussing how Israeli security forces allegedly threatened to kill her if
she would not get undressed for a security check at a roadblock, and the voice
of a man discussing how he had been unable to save a dying Palestinian woman
blocked en route to the hospital by hard-hearted Israeli security personnel at
another roadblock.
We heard about the alleged intolerance of the Wiesenthal Center's Museum of
Tolerance being sited at a city center Muslim cemetery. This came complete with
outrageous declarations by the Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem and others that
Israel routinely builds parking lots and shopping malls over Muslim sites in a
systematic effort to erase Islamic history.
And in the most powerful of this succession of mini- features, we followed a
group of Palestinian laborers as they sought to make their way into the city to
earn the money to feed their families. The camera tracked the hapless young men
risking life and limb to scale walls, crawl through barbed wire and dash across
highways pre-dawn - all in the hope of finding honest work, and all in a
desperate cat-and-mouse game with the Israeli security forces.
The final images were of uniformed Israeli troops chasing down a trailing member
of the group and catching him. There he stood in all his cornered misfortune,
his face a study in despair, his hands ripped and bloodied by Israel's barbed
wire.
Israel was unhappy because CNN failed to give equal or more time to the Petah
Tikva suicide bomber's victims? This incendiary Palestinian propaganda onslaught
gave next-to-no hint of a dissenting narrative, with the short entitled The
Little Western Wall constituting the only relative exception.
There was no meaningful explanation of why it was that Israel, defending against
waves of suicide bombers, constructed the security barrier in the first place.
There was no mention of the attacks at roadblocks, often carried out by the most
innocent-looking civilians, that necessitate Israeli security precautions there.
There was no suggestion, in the short on those feisty refugee camp rappers, that
contrary to the casual assertion of murder, Israel does not actually go around
capriciously killing the parents of young Palestinians in refugee camps. There
was no discussion of the protracted efforts to find a compromise over the Museum
of Tolerance.
And there was no reminder, in the emotive section on young Palestinians
infiltrating Jerusalem at great risk to find work, of the fact that hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians were working in Israel, entering and leaving the city
freely, until Yasser Arafat rejected Ehud Barak's peace terms at Camp David in
2000 and came back to foster the second intifada - the terror war that has so
blighted lives on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian chasm.
To the dismay of some in the audience, Jerusalem Moments was warmly received at
the Jerusalem Film Festival, and will presumably go on to play to similar effect
at other festivals and screenings around the world. CNN has already done a
report on it, now available on YouTube: "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict as
told through film."
OH WELL. What can you do? Ours is a free society, and we rightly aspire to the
most elevated democratic values and the fullest possible freedoms of expression.
I don't mean that cynically. We must indeed strive to maintain those values,
even though those freedoms are sometimes exploited by those who denigrate and
demonize us. That's the way it is with free speech, and we have the equivalent
freedom to endorse and oppose, to applaud and object, as and when we see fit.
My only question is, do we actually have to participate in the more extreme
demonization? Do we ourselves have to directly contribute to the kind of
dismally skewed, toxic, decontextualized attack that prompts official complaint
and widespread frustration when practiced by others? Do we have to finance it
ourselves?
For Ir Amim's Jerusalem Moments was made, in part, with NIS 200,000 of funding
from the Cinema Project of the Tel Aviv-based Rabinovitch Foundation for the
Arts, which gets its funding, in turn, via the Israeli Film Council, from the
Ministry of Culture and Sport.
Jerusalem Moments was relentless Palestinian Israel- bashing, interspersed with
near-relentless Israeli Israel- bashing. And we paid for it.
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GRAPHIC: 2 photos: 'A MATTER OF SIZE.' Israelis as normal, flawed human beings.
'Jerusalem Moments.' Israelis as vicious, murderous oppressors.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
Privacy & sensitivity
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 733 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
Mental disease is not a crime. Society's role is not to banish mental patients,
but to care for them while recognizing the patient's human rights and the need
to safeguard the public. A society's attitude toward the mentally ill reflects
its moral standards, values...
- Former supreme court chief justice Aharon Barak
By this criterion how should Israeli society, and the media in particular,
evaluate its performance in the case of the mother suspected of starving her
toddler son due to Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP)?
In this rare disorder, which is almost impossible to diagnose and cannot be
treated, an adult caregiver deliberately causes harm to a vulnerable dependent -
most often a child. The underlying cause is a morbid craving for attention.
MSP is either a personality or a psychiatric disorder - experts disagree -
though it can have criminal consequences. Most professionals believe that a
mother with MSP does have the capacity to control her urges. We cannot know what
impelled this mother to allegedly inflict suffering on her child. Her
psychiatric evaluation began only Monday night.
After the mother was arrested by police, the family obtained a court order
barring publication of the story. Somehow a Hebrew tabloid got wind of the news,
challenged the injunction and won. Perhaps the court acted precipitously in
lifting the gag order, robbing authorities and community leaders of the
opportunity to resolve their differences away from the limelight.
The tabloid then sought and obtained a comment from Hadassah hospital.
Subsequent coverage by the press emphasized that the family involved was from an
insular anti-Zionist haredi sect - Toldot Aharon. Coming on the heels of the
so-called Taliban mother from Ramat Beit Shemesh and several other instances of
child abuse among the ultra-Orthodox, the haredi angle to the Munchausen
Syndrome story grabbed the headlines and wouldn't let go.
SO THERE are two issues here. One is whether the right to privacy of the suspect
- who is also allegedly mentally ill - was violated; the other is whether the
haredi angle was overplayed.
Should Israel's 1981 Privacy Protection Law and 1996 Patients' Rights Law have
shielded the presumed MSP mother from having her condition exposed to public
scrutiny? While her name hasn't been published, her identity is known within her
own neighborhood.
The privacy question can't be resolved at this stage, partly because of the
murky nature of MSP, and partly because we still don't know if the mother's
alleged behavior could be attributable to some other factor.
The president of the Israel Press Council, former Supreme Court Justice Dalia
Dorner, argued that referencing the mother's haredi affiliation tainted the
reputation of the law-abiding ultra-Orthodox majority. "By Press Council
standards it's unethical to define a person in a manner that maligns an entire
social category," she declared.
While we emphatically subscribe to the ideals Dorner enunciated, might it be
asking too much of the media to downplay the appearance of a pattern of abuse
among haredim?
Plainly, however, once haredi demagogues incited their followers to react to the
mother's confinement with violence, once ultra-Orthodox crowds began destroying
traffic lights, burning trash bins, hurling rocks and snarling traffic along
Jerusalem's main arteries, the haredi angle became integral to the story.
(Damage to city property is well in excess of NIS 1 million.)
Then, too, for many haredim who had nothing to do with the violence this focus
only emphasized the feeling that their community was being unfairly scrutinized,
stereotyped and shunned by mainstream Israel. To which their critics would
retort: An entire collective can't claim to live their lives "trembling before
God," yet expect not to be held to the highest standards.
Recently, the Israel Broadcasting Authority ombudsman sided with complaints
against Reshet Bet radio news that repeatedly described a juvenile joy rider who
injured a toddler as haredi. The ombudsman agreed that "the item didn't mandate
the reiterated harping on the teen's haredi identity."
Even if the media committed no ethical infractions in the MSP mother case, the
experience ought to remind us that we have an obligation to protect the privacy
of those who may be mentally ill. And to be more mindful of not tarring entire
communities following the misdeeds of individual members.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
President Klaus, tear down this statue!
BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 918 words
HIGHLIGHT: Fundamentally Freund
Everybody seems to love Prague. Indeed, for the historically-conscious Jewish
tourist, few European cities can match the capital of the Czech Republic. With
its array of hauntingly beautiful medieval synagogues, its millennium-old ghetto
and ancient Jewish cemetery, there is enough to pique the interest of even the
most seasoned travelers. A number of fine kosher restaurants dot the city's Old
Town, and even with a yarmulke on, it is possible to walk the streets without an
overriding sense of fear.
How many other places on the Continent can currently make such a claim? It is no
wonder, then, that Prague's cobblestone alleyways are packed with visitors from
abroad, as the city has rapidly become a highly popular and exquisitely
enjoyable destination.
And no one appears more aware of Prague's pulling power than the Czech
authorities, who are careful to cultivate the city's past with an eye toward
attracting still more Jewish and Israeli tourism.
In the coming weeks, for example, Prague will be gearing up for a series of
events commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Judah ben
Betzalel Loew, better known as the Maharal of Prague. Under the auspices of
Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Prague Mayor Pavel Bem, the local Jewish museum
is putting on a major exhibition about the Maharal's life and work, along with a
series of other activities and programs aimed at highlighting his contributions
to Jewish life and lore. It is a fitting display of respect for one of Jewry's
towering spiritual and intellectual giants, and Czech officials deserve nothing
but praise in this regard.
And yet despite all it has to offer, Prague inexplicably continues to play host
to one of the most blatantly offensive anti-Jewish landmarks in all of Europe,
and the time has come for this to change.
I'm sure I am not the only Jewish visitor to express shock and outrage while
walking along the otherwise charming Charles Bridge, which connects the two
sides of Prague that straddle the Vlatava River. There, between tables manned by
itinerant artists and locals hawking tourist goods, stands a statue of Jesus on
the cross encircled by a Hebrew inscription from the book of Isaiah (chapter 6):
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole world is filled with His
glory."
As a religious Jew, I immediately recognized this verse. It is a central part of
Jewish liturgy and is recited daily in our prayers, as we emulate the heavenly
angels who declare God's holiness and attest to His sovereignty.
So what is it doing decorating such a statue in the middle of Prague?
The answer dates back to 1696, when Czech authorities accused a local Jew, Elias
Backoffen, of "debasing the Holy Cross" and ordered him to pay for the purchase
of gold- plated Hebrew letters, which were then installed on the statue of Jesus
in a deliberate swipe at Jewish sensitivities.
The choice of verse was no accident. The authorities wanted to punish the Jews
for their alleged insolence by compelling them to apply the verse to Jesus, as
though they were acknowledging the Christian belief in the divinity of the
Nazarene.
The statue, then, is more than just an eyesore. It is a slap in the face to
Jewish belief and theology, and a tangible sign of the oppression and lack of
freedom that characterized Jewish life throughout much of Europe's shameful
history.
APPARENTLY, I am not the only one to feel this way. In 2000, after a group of
American rabbis protested, the Prague Municipality reportedly agreed to put up a
plaque in Czech, Hebrew and English explaining the historical circumstances
behind the statue. But on a recent visit to the site, I saw no such plaque.
Not surprisingly, others have taken matters into their own hands. In January
2007, the Czech Press Agency reported that an unknown perpetrator had assaulted
the statue and removed part of the Hebrew inscription. The report quoted Jan
Knezinek, director of Prague's national heritage department, as acknowledging
that his office receives regular complaints from tourists about the statue
because it offends Jewish religious feelings.
Nonetheless, it continues to sit there on the bridge, as crowds stand and gawk
at it, taking photos of this well- known local landmark which openly and
unashamedly ridicules the foundations of Jewish belief.
Sure, some might think this is making a mountain out of a molehill, and that in
any event, the statue and its Hebrew lettering are part of history and must be
left in place. But I beg to differ.
There are some insults which do not recede with the passage of time, and the
statue on the Charles Bridge continues to offend. It symbolizes the intolerance
and hatred which led to Jews being tossed into ghettos, and sharply undercuts
the otherwise welcoming atmosphere which the city projects.
Czech authorities would therefore do well to remove the Hebrew lettering from
the statue once and for all, if only for the sake of healing this open wound on
Jewish- Czech relations.
The Jewish community of what was then Czechoslovakia was virtually annihilated
by the Germans and their collaborators in World War II, so it is incumbent upon
Israel and world Jewry to take the lead and raise their voices in protest and
press the Czechs to take action. Basic Jewish self-respect and dignity demand no
less.
For however keen they might be to celebrate the legacy of their Jews, Czech
officials need to realize that they cannot spit in our faces and expect us to
ignore it.
So to President Klaus, I declare: Tear down this statue!
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: THE STATUE of Jesus encircled by a Hebrew inscription from the
book of Isaiah draws regular complaints from Jewish tourists.
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1034 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
Letters
BYLINE: Monty M. Zion, Matthew Berman, Maurice Picow, Gershon Copperman, Rabbi
Dov Kaplan, Lotte Lapian, Barbara Pfeffer, Robert Lax
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1173 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Israeli consensus...
Sir, - It came as no surprise to read an op-ed by the CEO and president of
Americans for Peace Now claiming that President Obama's statements clearly
indicate that he is on a set course that could result in peace between Israel
and the Palestinians ("Obama means what he says," Debra DeLee, July 22).
However, the adjoining article, Amnon Lord's "Obama's calculations were wrong,"
clearly debunked this viewpoint.
What none of those who praise Obama's views on Israel troubles to do is define
the Western border of the so- called West Bank. In the eyes of the Palestinian
Authority, this would be the 1949 Armistice Line. In that case, Jerusalem
neighborhoods such as Ramot, Gilo, French Hill, Ramat Eshkol and East Talpiot
are all settlements - in which the American regime demands all construction must
cease.
No Israeli, including even members of Peace Now, would accept this; these areas
have been legally annexed and are an inseparable part of Jerusalem. Our
diplomats need to make this clear to the American leaders. They might also refer
to an excellent letter in the same issue by Colin L. Leci ("Sovereignty over
Jerusalem") describing the significance and history of the area, which has
resulted in the current controversy.
MONTY M. ZION
Tel Mond
...on various levels
Sir, - Debra Delee's op-ed was a fine article, yet written by somebody obviously
ignorant of the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The article may very well
reflect Obama's policies in reality; the administration's take on the peace
process is certainly ignorant, yet shrewd - the Arab regimes and Iran are run by
intransigent dictators, and Obama is dealing with them on their level, not on
his.
With Israel, because Israel is a democracy and susceptible to rhetorical
pressure, Obama is dealing with Israel on his level.
Israel's best hope for peace is to simply wait for electric cars to slash oil
prices to the ground, so that the regimes will have no cash to blow on
propaganda but will actually have to deal with governing. Then the meaning of
"Middle East Peace" will take on a new meaning, as every single regime becomes
engulfed in revolutions and each Arab country and Iran deals with civil war.
MATTHEW BERMAN
Herzliya
Sweet dreams
Sir, - The day will come - and very soon, I believe - when people here will
wistfully think back to the policies of the Bush administration, which may turn
out to have been one of Israeli's closest allies.
The present realities, including the visit of PA President Mahmoud Abbas to
Turkey the other day, only indicate a new "direction" in Israeli-Palestinian
relations, let alone those with the US ("Abbas arrives in Turkey for talks about
Mideast peace efforts," July 16).
To those many Jews who voted for the new US administration: You helped make the
bed, now lie in it.
MAURICE PICOW
Netanya
Much obliged
Sir, - Chief Rabbi Amar says "US policy on settlements contravenes a Torah
obligation"(July 21). Where was the learned rabbi when our brethren were thrown
out of Gush Katif? Was the "Torah obligation" not valid then?
GERSHON COPPERMAN
Petah Tikva/Dublin
I despise this attitude
Sir, - As a serving rabbi, I believe that the suffering of children and other
innocents is regrettable. But as the father of a young soldier wounded in last
winter's fighting in Gaza, I despise the attitude of those rabbis calling for
fasting to get Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza ("US rabbis call for monthly
fast against Gaza blockade," July 14).
Did they fast for the safety and well-being of Israeli citizens while our sons
were laying their lives on the line? Did they cry out during the years when
deadly rockets rained down on the children of Sderot? We never heard from them.
They are rabbis; there is no excusing their naivete.
Clearly, no one wants the residents of Gaza to suffer. It's no secret that
Israel allows food and basic necessities into Gaza, but supervised, to prevent
arms and explosives being smuggled in.
What these rabbis are proposing would endanger Israelis' lives - civilians as
well as youngsoldiers. To all of us here, every soldier is my little boy. Why is
a child in Gaza more preciousthan my son?
Living over there in the US, it's easy for these rabbis to preach to Israel. I
say: Until you're prepared to join us here, get off your soapboxes.
RABBI DOV KAPLAN
Caesarea
Mass miss
Sir, - In honor of Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary, Milan's La Scala, in a truly
gracious and grandiose gesture, is bringing the whole company to Israel for a
performance of Aida plus an open-air concert version of Verdi's "Requiem."
Was there not a Jew among the organizers who could tell the Italian Catholics
tactfully that a solemn mass for the Christian dead is less than suitable to
celebrate a century of the first Jewish city built in the Holy Land in modern
times?
Ervin Birnbaum's "'Requiem' in the park - and in Theresienstadt " (July 14)
about the performances of Verdi's Requiem by the Theresienstadt "model ghetto"
prisoners was a tragic, moving accompaniment to the Italian presentation here.
(Herman Wouk in War and Remembrance describes the wartime event, from perception
to performance, in heartbreaking detail.)
I can imagine the fierce arguments at the time about the suitability of this
piece. We will never know why it was chosen, and we must honor the decision. Of
course the Germans were entertained by the sight and sound of these scarecrows
singing their hearts out in a mass prior to their own demise, and we can have
only a dim notion of the superhuman physical and spiritual strength required.
Tel Aviv deserves a fitting musical commemoration of its anniversary. However,
Verdi's Requiem does not fit the bill.
LOTTE LAPIAN
Netanya
Precious hanukkia
Sir, - My husband and I were fortunate to visit London's Jewish Museum before it
closed for renovations. Our interest was a personal one.
My ancestor Reb Aaron Levy, a dayan in the London Beit Din 1832-1876 as well as
its secretary and accredited scribe, was a gifted calligrapher and illustrator.
Three of his works from the 1820s have survived, one an ornately decorated Omer
Board dated 1826, on view at the museum.
We were able to add background information about Reb Aaron and the Omer Board,
and the museum allowed my husband to reprint a photograph of it in his book From
One End of the Earth to the Other.
How exciting it was to be able to hold such a treasure, produced by my
great-great-uncle!
Has someone the wherewithal to supply the funds still lacking to purchase the
Lindo Hanukkia? It would be a worthwhile endeavor. The newly renovated museum
would give the hanukkia the pride of place it deserves, and I look forward to
seeing it there when the museum reopens its doors in 2010 ("London's Jewish
Museum preparing to buy 300-year-old hanukkia for new location," July 22).
BARBARA PFEFFER
Rehovot
What's new?
Sir, - In From our Archives, 50 years ago, (July 21): Aharon Wiener, head of
Tahal, stated that new water sources were falling behind needs, and the country
faced a critical water shortage.
Has anything changed since 1959?
ROBERT LAX
Haifa
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The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
Listen to the Left
BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1049 words
HIGHLIGHT: When even hard-core Israeli leftists are speaking out against Obama,
left-of-center American Jews can no longer pretend there is no problem. Civil
Fights
Too many articles lambasting the continued Jewish support for US President
Barack Obama have overlooked a crucial point: Many American Jews agree with his
positions on Israel. Like him, they think Israel should completely freeze the
settlements, withdraw to the 1967 lines and divide Jerusalem, and that peace
would break out if only it did so. None of these views are shared by a majority
of Israelis. But as long as American Jews hold them, expecting them to echo
mainstream Israeli concerns over these policies is delusional.
What is genuinely puzzling, however, is why Obama supporters appear equally deaf
to the anguished cries of Israel's left, which has long advocated precisely
these policies. When the editorial staff of Haaretz, a bastion of Israel's hard
left, pens three opinion pieces criticizing Obama in the space of 10 days, it
ought to be clear even to left-of-center American Jews that Obama has an Israel
problem.
THE FIRST, by veteran diplomatic correspondent and columnist Aluf Benn, appeared
on July 10. Titled "The left went to the beach," it sought to explain why
Israeli leftists, who vocally supported previous American demands for a
settlement freeze, have not rallied behind Obama's. Not only have there been no
demonstrations, but at a Knesset debate in early July, he noted, not a single MK
urged compliance with Obama's demand.
One reason, Benn posited, is that Obama never tried "to communicate with the
Israeli public." He "spoke to Arabs and Muslims, but not Israelis. His neglect
increased Israelis' fears that we do not have a friend in the White House."
This impression was bolstered by "the administration's pathetic attempt to deny
the existence of understandings on settlement construction" between Obama's
predecessor and Israel: "It was possible to accuse Israel of violating its
promises, or to say that the policy had changed and explain why, but not to
lie."
Additionally, "Obama obtained nothing from the Palestinians and the Arab states
in exchange, and his insistence on a settlement freeze only encouraged
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his refusal to negotiate with
[Binyamin] Netanyahu. Under these circumstances, it is hard for the Israeli left
to blame the government for ruining the chances for peace."
Finally, "the more time passes, the more it appears that the demand to freeze
settlement construction was meant to demonstrate a distancing from Israel."
Obama has turned a settlement freeze "into a matter of honor," and "when the
argument is about who is stronger instead of the real issue, anyone who urges
Netanyahu to give in to Obama will be accused of being unpatriotic. And the
Israeli left does not want to be backed into that corner."
Thus after six months in office, Obama has made even Israeli leftists, who
enthusiastically supported his election, doubt his friendship with Israel,
rendering them unable to support his policies without appearing unpatriotic.
And, equally grave, he has actually undermined the peace process by encouraging
Abbas's refusal to negotiate.
A week later, Haaretz devoted its editorial to the Obama problem. Titled "Speak
to us, too," it began by slamming Netanyahu for "entering into an unnecessary
and harmful conflict" with Obama's administration and "rejecting Obama's
essential desire" to bring peace. Obama's presidency, it asserted, has created
"a unique opportunity" for peacemaking that "it would be a shame to miss."
But then came the punch line: "Now, the US administration must convince the
Israeli public that it has a friend in the White House, and that the
administration's positions correspond with Israel's national interests. After
talking to the Arabs, Muslims and Iranians, in speeches and on television, it is
only right that Obama also address the Israeli public."
Again, the message was clear: Even Israel's left wants convincing that Obama
will not sacrifice Israel's interests.
THEN, LAST Friday, star columnist Yoel Marcus chimed in. For all Obama's
goodwill, he wrote, "there is something naive, not to say infuriating, about his
policy of dialogue and about the whistle stops he has chosen in his travels
regarding our issue. He spoke in Turkey, he spoke in Egypt, he appeared before
students in Saudi Arabia, Paris, England, Ghana and Australia.
Even there the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was mentioned... The only place he
hasn't been is Israel. He has spoken about us, but not to us."
Moreover, Obama "is behaving as though everything starts and ends with the
question of whether Israel will or will not freeze construction in the
settlements," completely ignoring such crucial details as that the Oslo Accords
resulted in waves of suicide bombers and the Gaza pullout in daily rocket
attacks. His "obscuring of the fact that the Palestinians have not managed to
overcome their passions and be worthy partners for a peace agreement" is
"upsetting."
Finally, while "Obama assumed he did a great thing when he spoke in Cairo about
the Jewish people's suffering in the Holocaust," the "implied distortion: that
we deserve a state because of the Holocaust" is "infuriating."
"As a leader who aspires to solve the problems of the world through dialogue,"
Marcus concluded, "we expect him to come to Israel and declare here
courageously, before the entire world, that our connection to this land began
long before the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Holocaust, and that 4,000 years
ago, Jews already stood on the ground where he now stands."
In short, Obama is placing the onus entirely on Israel, thus absolving the
Palestinians of any need to amend their behavior.
Moreover, by basing Israel's claim to statehood on the Holocaust rather than the
Jews' historic connection to this land, he has fed the Arab fantasy that Jews
are colonialist interlopers with no right to be here, and that the Palestinians
are being sacrificed to atone for European misdeeds - thereby fostering Arab
intransigence and unwillingness to end the conflict.
When even the hard-core leftists of Haaretz's editorial board feel that a) Obama
seems hostile to Israel and b) his policies actually undermine the peace
process, his American Jewish supporters ought to take note.
Because no matter how sincerely Obama wants peace, a president who has lost even
Israel's hard left has no chance of delivering it.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: BARACK AND MICHELLE Obama at the White House country music
series on Tuesday. (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
A haredi consensus?
BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1174 words
HIGHLIGHT: For weeks a sign has hung in the Mirer Yeshiva forbidding any
participation in demonstrations. THINK AGAIN
The lead paragraph of a front-page story in Monday's Jerusalem Post describes
"the entire haredi public as having formed a united front... to support the
Jerusalem mother who allegedly starved her three-year-old boy."
That statement is grossly misleading, as the article itself makes clear.
It would be accurate to say that the haredi public is united in its resentment
of being tarred with the violence in Mea She'arim. It is also true that few
haredim can understand why a pregnant mother was jumped and shackled by police
as she left a meeting with her social worker, and then held without bail for
three days in the most primitive prison conditions. (The municipal social
workers in Jerusalem's Bukharan Quarter social service office were besides
themselves over the police action.)
Hadassah-University Medical Center could easily have started with a civil
proceeding to prevent the mother from seeing her child, which is what the mother
was told was going to happen before her visit to the social worker. The police
used imprisonment to force the woman to confess or submit to examination by a
psychiatrist of their choice (rather than a neutral court-appointed
psychiatrist).
None of the conditions for a denial of bail applied, especially if she were
placed in the home of one of the communal rabbis who immediately offered to
house her. She was in no position to interfere with the police investigation,
did not present an ongoing danger and was not a serious flight risk.
But it is absolutely false to state that there is any kind of consensus that the
mother is innocent or a categorical rejection of the claims of Hadassah. In
yesterday's Mishpacha, by far the largest circulation haredi weekly, Rabbi
Mordechai Gotfarb of the Toldot Aharon community is quoted, "Of course, if she
were diagnosed with Munchausen, then we would understand that the child would
have to be taken away."
Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, head of the Eda Haredit rabbinical court, did not reject
out of hand police claims in a statement issued last Friday: "If their
allegations are true, this woman deserves the appropriate medical treatment, but
not to sit in a prison cell with such subhuman treatment." He went on to
categorically reject "any talk of boycotting the hospital" as "against Halacha
and self-damaging" in light of the fact that "many in our community receive
their services with great care."
That does not mean, of course, that every claim of the hospital and police is
accepted at face value. Many haredim would still like to know what were the
presenting symptoms when the boy in question was placed in Hadassah's children's
oncology ward, and how his mother could have prevented him from eating under the
noses of the hospital staff during the nearly seven months he has been
hospitalized. But there is a willingness to wait until trial for the full
presentation of the facts.
IF THERE is one thing, however, about which there is a nearly unanimous
agreement across all sectors of the haredi community, it is condemnation of
violent actions, such as throwing stones at police and burning garbage cans.
From the beginning of the Shabbat demonstrations, after Mayor Nir Barkat's
bombastic announcement of the opening of a municipal parking lot, as if he were
the secular Saracen recapturing the city from the haredim, Sternbuch has issued
countless public proclamations stating clearly, "Anyone who commits acts of
violence declares that he doesn't belong to our community."
For weeks a sign has hung in the Mirer Yeshiva, hand- written by the rosh
yeshiva, Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, so there can be no mistake, forbidding not
just any violent actions, but any participation in demonstrations at all. "No
one can give you a heter [permission]," the sign adds for emphasis.
My editorial in this week's Mishpacha quotes veteran Eda Haredit leader Rabbi
Shlomo Pappenheim strongly condemning the recent demonstrations, and a long
interview with him appears in today's Mishpacha. He points out that Rabbi Amram
Blau, founder of Natorei Karta, modeled his tactics on Mahatma Gandhi. He and
his followers always acted passively, even when being beaten by police. Today,
however, inevitably some hotheaded youth will throw a stone at police and
trigger a riot.
As a consequence, Pappenheim says, the demonstrations do grievous harm to the
interests of the entire haredi community, and especially to those who
participate in them. But his most shocking criticism is that they push off the
Redemption. A stronger condemnation, in haredi terms, does not exist.
PAPPENHEIM QUOTES his teacher Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, the late chief rabbi
of the Eda Haredit, to the effect that that the Redemption does not require that
all Jews first become fully observant, but only that there be some drawing
closer to God. The rest, writes Maimonides, the Messiah will do.
Never has the time been so ripe for such a spiritual arousal, Pappenheim feels.
The "isms" that once drew Jewish youth have lost their appeal. The spiritual
hunger of Israeli youth manifested in their travels to the Far East in search of
enlightenment was already foretold by the prophet: "Behold, days are coming...
when I will send hunger into the land; not a hunger for bread nor a thirst for
water, but to hear the words of God. [People] will travel from sea to sea, and
from north to east; they will wander about to seek the word of God, but they
will not find it" (Amos 8:11-12).
Those who make Torah Jews and Judaism appear as something ugly and violent
guarantee that their fellow Jews who thirst for the word of God will seek it in
foreign pastures.
The burning of garbage cans in Mea She'arim does for the image of Torah Judaism
what the Watts and Newark riots of 1964 did for the image of inner-city blacks.
IF THE HAREDI rabbis and public are so opposed to violence, secular Jews ask,
why don't they stop it? That question, however, derives from one of the common
misconceptions about the haredi community: that it is led by a half-dozen rabbis
whose word is law. While it might be true that no haredi MK would openly oppose
Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, for example, the latter cannot even command
obedience in his own Mea She'arim neighborhood.
Rabbi Aharon Feldman, today a member of the Council of Torah Sages of Agudath
Israel of America, remembers that during the Ramot road demonstrations of the
early 1980s, he and a group of some of the most respected young roshei yeshiva
in Israel went out to urge the hooligans from Mea She'arim, who were throwing
stones, to stop. "They just laughed at us," he told me.
Those hooligans represent a haredi educational failure. Even the fact that
yeshiva students, some of them American tourists, participated or went to view
recent demonstrations out of curiosity represents another type of educational
failure. A talmudic education is supposed to develop qualities of judgment and
foresight.
But the violent few do not represent the values of the Torah, or of the
overwhelming majority of haredi Jews.
That is the only issue on which a haredi consensus exists.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: VETERAN EDA HAREDIT leader Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim strongly
condemned the recent demonstrations, noting they push off the redemption.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
Barack Obama, gird thy loins
BYLINE: DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 845 words
HIGHLIGHT: Just when it looked like the crisis in US-Israel relations was
turning around, Netanyahu decided to escalate the disagreement rather than try
to diffuse it privately. Washington Watch
Just when it looked like a serious Washington- Jerusalem rift might be avoided -
thanks in large part to the Saudis and their mishpucha - Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu opened it wider with a burst of provocative demagoguery.
A meeting last week between the new Israeli ambassador and a State Department
official was inexplicably blown up into a crisis. Initial news leaks out of the
Prime Minister's Office said Michael Oren had been "summoned" to Foggy Bottom
and presented a "demand" that an east Jerusalem apartment project be halted.
Oren was actually making a get-acquainted visit with Deputy Secretary of State
Jacob Lew, who protested the project, which was financed by long-time Netanyahu
supporter and backer of right-wing causes, Bingo baron Irving Moskowitz. The US
has consistently objected to Israeli construction in east Jerusalem's Arab
neighborhoods.
Instead of dealing with the issue quietly as had been his predecessors' practice
over the past 15 years, Netanyahu decided to go public and escalate the crisis
by accusing the Obama administration of trying to tell Jews they could not live
where they wished in their own capital.
Where do the Saudis fit in? Netanyahu has the Saudi king and other Arab leaders
to thank for relieving American pressure for a total settlement freeze and
persuading the White House to seek a fallback compromise that is expected to
allow current construction to be completed, followed by a freeze of some months
to gauge the Arab reaction.
President Barack Obama went to Riyadh last month in advance of his Cairo speech
to the Muslim world. According to some reports the king made clear to Obama he
was unwilling to show reciprocal gestures in exchange for a halt to settlements.
King Abdullah stuck by his demand that Israel accept the all-or-nothing Saudi
plan.
As a result, George Mitchell, the Mideast envoy and prime mover in the demand
for a settlement freeze, is going back to the region this week to work out a
compromise with Netanyahu.
What's puzzling is just when it looked like the crisis in US-Israel relations
was turning around - the White House made a point of praising Netanyahu's recent
moves to improve conditions for West Bank Palestinians - Netanyahu decided to
escalate the disagreement rather than try to defuse it privately.
Some observers say he feels a spat with Washington over Jerusalem - unlike the
unpopular settlements - may help him rally American Jews against Obama's peace
policies, but has he forgotten that a big reason voters tossed him out the last
time - and why Yitzhak Shamir got the boot in 1992 - was his failed stewardship
of the American account?
Military analyst Amir Oren wrote this week that Netanyahu's "bickering" with
Obama "over the nonsense surrounding the settlements is harming the IDF's
capability in dealing with its most vital missions," notably Iran.
One of the risks of getting $3 billion a year from American taxpayers is you
can't tell your benefactor to just shut up and send more money.
Netanyahu reportedly has accused the Obama White House of pushing the settlement
freeze to bring down his government and called the president's top two aides,
chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior advisor David Axelrod, self-hating Jews.
I wonder if he's added Jack Lew to that list. Where's Dale Carnegie when you
really need him?
Does he think he can intimidate Obama into dropping efforts to resuscitate peace
negotiations? Or is he trying to derail Obama's rumored plans to proffer his own
proposal for reviving peace talks, including a binding timetable for resolving
final status issues? There are indications that some on the right in the
American Jewish community, including some at the top of key organizations, are
encouraging Netanyahu to openly challenge Obama as part of a campaign - begun in
last year's presidential campaign - to paint this president as an enemy of
Israel.
In his first six months in office, Obama has visited 15 countries, some more
than once, but not Israel, although it is critical to his diplomatic agenda.
It was important that he spoke in Cairo about America's "unshakeable" commitment
to Israel, but he has to deliver that message in person to a nervous Israeli
public, whose support and trust he doesn't yet have. It's not enough to invite
16 Jewish machers to the White House or meet the prime minister in the Oval
Office.
Speaking directly to the Israeli people may be the only way to counteract
Netanyahu's strategy of using conflict with the new president to strengthen his
position in Israel's vicious internal political wars.
And while he's in the neighborhood, Obama should speak to the Palestinians as
well, assuring both communities of his good intentions and motivating them to
motivate their governments, which are showing little interest in meaningful
peace negotiations. He also needs to convince all of them that he will not try
to impose an agreement on Israel, as Palestinian leaders have demanded.
To paraphrase the prophet Jeremiah, it is time for Obama to gird up thy loins,
and get thee to the Holy Land and speak to them all.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
The smearing of human rights organizations
BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 988 words
HIGHLIGHT: RATTLING THE CAGE
From the way the Prime Minister's Office is denouncing Human Rights Watch, you'd
think the New York-based human rights organization was an anti-Semitic,
pro-Hamas propaganda machine that was financed by the Saudis. In a news feature
last Friday titled "Israel vs. Human Rights Watch," The Jerusalem Post's Herb
Keinon quoted Ron Dermer, director of policy planning for the Prime Minister's
Office, giving Israel's official view of all these human rights reports,
especially from HRW, about Operation Cast Lead.
"The reports of these organizations are an attempt to undermine Israel's
legitimate right to self-defense," Dermer said, adding that those who are
attacking Israel for defending itself against terrorists using civilians as
human shields are playing Hamas's game. "Every NGO that participates in this
adds fuel to the fire and is serving the cause of Hamas."
(In other words, you're either with us - all the way, no matter what we do - or
you're with the terrorists. And remember, Israel values the right to dissent.)
The catalyst for this campaign was the discovery that in May, HRW officials went
fund-raising in Saudi Arabia. Meeting with a group that included an important
Saudi cleric, they described HRW's work in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, including
its reports on Operation Cast Lead and the opposition it faces from "pro-Israel
pressure groups," according to a story in the Saudi Arab News.
"Grossly immoral," said Gerald Steinberg, head of NGO Monitor, an organization
whose sole activity is to tear down human rights organizations that are critical
of Israel. (It was NGO Monitor that first picked up on the Arab News item.) Said
Prime Minister's Office spokesman Mark Regev: "A human rights organization
raising money in Saudi Arabia is like a women's rights group asking the Taliban
for a donation."
Sinister, isn't it? Now we know why Human Rights Watch writes all those terrible
things about the way we treat Palestinians - because it's bought and paid for by
the Islamofascists!
But before we lobby Congress to list HRW as a terrorist front, let's see if it
really is as one-sided against Israel as we think. Let's see what it has to say,
for instance, about Saudi Arabia.
"Human rights conditions remain poor in Saudi Arabia," begins HRW in its 2009
report. Some highlights:
Foreign workers in the kingdom "suffer a range of abuses and labor exploitation,
sometimes rising to slavery- like conditions."
Migrant domestic workers "endure a range of abuses including forced confinement
in the workplace, food deprivation and psychological, physical and sexual
abuse."
Regardless of nationality, "detainees, including children, are commonly the
victims of systematic and multiple violations of due process and fair trial
rights, including arbitrary arrest and torture and ill-treatment in detention.
Saudi judges routinely sentence defendants to thousands of lashes, often carried
out in public. In 2008, the kingdom carried out 88 executions as of
mid-November."
"Official tolerance for incitement to violence contrasted with intolerance
toward dissident opinion."
"Saudi Arabia systematically discriminates against its religious minorities."
Incidentally, this report was published in January - months before HRW's
fund-raising trip. Whoever those potential donors were, they probably weren't
the Saudis who hold the whips. The kingdom's regime, I imagine, is not a big fan
of Human Rights Watch.
Continuing on the issue of whether HRW is biased against Israel, let's look at a
report it published in April about Hamas's attacks on its own people during
Operation Cast Lead. Titled "Under Cover of War," it begins:
"This 26-page report documents a pattern since late December 2008 of arbitrary
arrests and detentions, torture, maimings by shooting and extradjudicial
executions by alleged members of Hamas security forces." One of the many
examples given is an attack by four armed, masked men on the al-Najjar family,
in which they killed the father and wounded 10 others.
"The victims ranged in age from a 12-year-old girl, Ahlam Hisham al-Najjar, who
was shot in the leg, to Zakkia al-Najjar, 70, Ahlam's grandmother, who was shot
in both legs. 'After the gunmen left, I saw a sea of blood,' said Amar Hisham
al-Najjar, 25. He told Human Rights Watch that the gunmen shot his father Hisham
in the chest, the abdomen and the legs."
The report doesn't let Fatah off, either, and makes it clear that
Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence didn't begin with Operation Cast Lead:
"Internal political violence in Gaza and the West Bank is not new. Over the past
three years, Hamas and its chief rival, Fatah, which controls the West Bank,
have carried out arbitrary arrests of each other's supporters and subjected
detainees to torture and ill-treatment."
So much for Human Rights Watch's "serving the cause of Hamas." So much for its
"grossly immoral" relationship with Saudi Arabia. The truth known to everyone
outside the right-wing echo chamber is that HRW, like Amnesty International,
like the International Committee for the Red Cross - all of which have slammed
Israel's actions in Operation Cast Lead - are impartial, credible sources of
information. They go after everybody - Israel, Saudi Arabia, Hamas, Fatah, Iran,
Syria, the US, Britain - whoever and wherever human rights are being violated.
Can the same thing be said about NGO Monitor? NGO Monitor doesn't have a word of
criticism for Israel, nor a word of acknowledgment, even grudging, for any
detail in any human rights report that shows Israel to be less than utterly
blameless. In fact, on the subject of Israel's human rights record, NGO Monitor
doesn't have a word of disagreement with the Prime Minister's Office.
So who's one-sided in this? Who's got the "agenda"? Who's believable and who's
not? In any country but this one, the answer's so obvious there's nothing to
discuss. But this country, unfortunately, lies deep inside the right-wing echo
chamber.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 23, 2009 Thursday
Obama and Israel, into the abyss
BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 735 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube
distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
What I dubbed the Obama administration's "rapid and harsh turn against Israel"
has had three quick, predictable and counterproductive results. These point to
further difficulties ahead.
First result: Barack Obama's decision to get tough with Israel translates into
escalating Palestinian demands. In early July, Palestinian Authority chief
Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat, his top negotiator, insisted on five unilateral
concessions by Israel: an independent Palestinian state; Israel shrunk to its
pre-June 1967 borders, minus a Palestinian land-bridge between the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip; a Palestinian "right of return"; resolution of all permanent
status issues on the basis of the 2002 Saudi plan; and a complete stop to
building by Jews in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Palestinians and Americans are the intended audience for this preemptory list;
such exorbitant demands, the record shows, only reduce Israeli willingness to
make concessions.
Second result: The US government takes marching orders from Abbas and passes
them along to the Israelis. Abbas complained to the Americans that the
construction of 20 apartments and an underground garage in the eastern Jerusalem
neighborhood of Shimon Hatzadik, 1.4 kilometers north of the Old City, would
shift Jerusalem's demographic balance. The State Department promptly summoned
Ambassador Michael Oren on July 17 and instructed him to halt the building
project.
Some background: Zionists founded the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in 1891 by
purchasing the land from Arabs, then due to Arab riots and Jordanian conquest,
abandoned the area. Amin al-Husseini, Jerusalem's pro-Nazi mufti, put up a
building in the 1930s that later served as the Shepherd Hotel (not to be
confused with the renowned Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. After 1967, the Israelis
designated the land "absentee property." Irving Moskowitz, an American
businessman, bought the land in 1985 and rented the building to the Border
Police until 2002. His company, C and M Properties, won final permission two
weeks ago to renovate the hotel and build apartments on the land.
Third result: The US demand has prompted an Israeli resolve not to bend but to
reiterate its traditional positions. Oren rejected State's demand. Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who confessed to being "surprised" by the US
demand, assured colleagues "I won't cave in on this matter."
PUBLICLY, NETANYAHU closed the door on concessions. Insisting that Israeli
sovereignty over Jerusalem "cannot be challenged," he noted that "residents of
Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city" and pointedly
recalled that "in recent years hundreds of apartments in Jewish neighborhoods
and in the western part of the city have been purchased by - or rented to - Arab
residents and we did not interfere.
"This says that there is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the western part
of the city and there is no ban on Jews buying or building apartments in the
eastern part of the city. This is the policy of an open city, an undivided city
that has no separation according to religion or national affiliation."
Then, his blistering finale: "We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have
the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem. I can only describe to
myself what would happen if someone would propose that Jews could not live in
certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly
be a major international outcry. Accordingly, we cannot agree to such a decree
in Jerusalem."
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asserted this same point, while Yuli
Edelstein, minister of Diaspora affairs, added that the US demand "proves how
dangerous it is to get dragged into talks of a settlement freeze. Such talks
will lead to a demand to completely freeze our lives in the entire State of
Israel."
From May 27, when the Obama administration began its attack on Israeli
"settlements," it has displayed an unexpected naivete; did this administration
really have to relearn for itself the well-known fact that Washington fails when
bossing around its main Middle Eastern ally? It then displayed rank incompetence
by picking a fight on an issue where an Israeli consensus exists - not over a
remote "outpost" but a Jerusalem quarter boasting a Zionist pedigree back to
1891.
How long until Obama understands his error and retreats from it? How much damage
will he do in the meantime?
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: SHEPHERD'S HOTEL. Zionists founded the Shimon Hatzadik
neighborhood in 1891 by purchasing the land from Arabs, then due to Arab riots
and Jordanian conquest, abandoned the area. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 22, 2009 Wednesday
When worlds collide
BYLINE: DAVID BREAKSTONE
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1230 words
HIGHLIGHT: Can the conflict be resolved by creating one state for two peoples -
both Jewish? The writer represents the worldwide Conservative/Masorti Movement
on the Executive of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization.
Last Thursday night my wife and I had plans to attend an open-air screening of
the Jerusalem Film Festival in the garden of Beit Ticho. We set out with some
trepidation, uncertain we'd be able to navigate our way safely through the
battlefield of Mea She'arim. Earlier that day, riots had erupted in this haredi
quarter of Jerusalem, only a few blocks from our destination. Clearly we weren't
the only ones who had second thoughts about venturing out; it was only 8 p.m.,
yet the streets were all but empty.
Nevertheless, determined not to allow those who were destroying their
neighborhood to destroy our evening as well, and seduced by the all-too-rare
traffic-free roads of the city center, we persevered. To our delight, we
actually arrived in record time, and wended our way into the stately grounds of
this magnificent Jerusalem landmark. Had we not been following the news, we'd
have had no idea that anything was amiss. The epicenter of the fierce
confrontation taking place was only a few hundred meters from where we sat
ourselves down, but also, seemingly, a world apart.
The violence raging around the corner from the tranquility of the Ticho estate
had been sparked by a judge's decision to hold a pregnant haredi woman in
custody after she was arrested on suspicion of systematically starving her
three-year old child, now hospitalized in a critical state of malnutrition.
Rather than eschewing her for this vile desecration of human life and blasphemy
of God's name, the community from whence she came was rallying around her,
castigating the outside world for interfering in their own. There was no
consideration here of right and wrong, only of us and them.
THROUGHOUT THE evening, my mind continuously took measure of the vast distance
between us. The mansion in whose proximity we sat had been built in the middle
of the 19th century by an Arab dignitary, more or less when the fashion of
Polish dignitaries at the time would become the dress code of the haredim. Our
world has been spinning through a century and a half of turbulence since then;
theirs, for all practical purposes, has stood still.
The film we were watching was produced in Austria 25 years ago as a protest
against the restraints placed upon women living in a male-dominated society
infused with the rigidity of religious conservatism. The protest taking place
down the block was a stark reminder that it might just as well have been made
here yesterday. The cultural divide separating us was further accentuated by the
explicit scenes of female sexuality integral to the film and its objective of
championing the feminist cause; a five-minute walk away posters warned the
daughters of Israel to dress with a modesty that would literally keep them
covered from head to toe.
This was not the first time that hundreds of haredim had gathered in recent
weeks to give expression to their rage. Tonight's overturning of dumpsters,
dismantling of traffic lights, cutting of electrical lines and hurling of stones
at the police followed nearly a month of violent protests over the Shabbat
opening of a municipal parking lot - free of charge - for visitors to the Old
City. This isn't merely a campaign of civil disobedience. When protesters
declare they will continue their struggle to the bitter end, when they declare
smugly that they do not accept the authority of the state, it is insurgency.
Their taking to the streets is not about asserting their right to live the
lifestyle of their choice; it is about their demand for insularity, a virtual
secession from the Zionist state whose protection, services and funds they
continue to enjoy.
ADDING INSULT to injury, all of this is happening during the solemn three-week
period leading up to Tisha Be'av, one of the most soulful days of the Jewish
calendar. It is 2595 years since the Temple was set on fire, and Jerusalem is
still burning. The stench for the time being may be that of refuse and not human
flesh, but it is the same inflammable material that is feeding the conflagration
today as then.
The senseless hatred - sinat hinam - rampant in our society should dissuade even
our most secular from embracing the suggestion advocated by some that with
Jerusalem again in Jewish hands, it no longer makes sense to mourn the loss of
Jewish sovereignty. Indeed, the opposite is true. Until we have succeeded in
rooting out the root cause of the discord threatening to tear our society
asunder, the day that has become synonymous with national calamity should be
accepted by the nation as a whole as an opportunity for communal soul searching.
I am not arguing Halacha here, nor theology. It doesn't really matter who or
what was responsible for our exile; what matters is that through two millennia
of dispersion, the tradition that we nurtured, and that in turn nurtured us as a
people, the ethos at the core of our collective identity, is that reestablishing
ourselves in the Land of Israel is not only about physical return, but a
metaphysical one as well, fixing what previously went wrong, repairing the world
we were responsible for devastating. We haven't done a very good job of that.
Though the current riots have only created rivulets of Jewish blood flowing in
the streets of Jerusalem, they are more than enough to conjure up images of the
rivers of blood graphically described in the Book of Lamentations.
But it is not in our tradition to end on a note of despair. Nor do I wish to fan
the flames of animosity, but rather to quench them. Thus a few words of comfort
are in order. While I don't expect that there are many among the stone throwers
who will be influenced by anything I have to say, there are things happening
that others might find encouraging.
This past week Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar overturned a ruling handed down
several months ago by haredi rabbis that would have invalidated thousands of
conversions officiated over by state-sanctioned rabbinic courts.
Kolech, a conference convened by Orthodox women committed to enhanced
participation of their gender in Jewish life, conducted a poll last week as to
which of several titles should be conferred on females receiving rabbinic
training.
In response to the disturbances promulgated by some in the haredi community,
others have written letters, talkbacks and op-ed pieces disassociating
themselves from these actions and condemning them.
Intermarriage here is on the rise. Not the kind that threatens Jewish
continuity, but the sort that promotes it. The evidence is only anecdotal, but
it appears that more and more weddings are taking place in the Jewish state
between those who have adopted a religious lifestyle and those who are far less
traditional, so much so that there are now a variety of seminars and workshops
available to assist these couples in overcoming the tensions they will
inevitably encounter as they establish families.
Perhaps this sort of counseling should be mandatory for us all. No one is
permitted to drive before receiving a minimum number of hours of instruction and
demonstrating certain competencies. Why should we be allowed to go about
building a state without first learning the laws involved and demonstrating that
we know how to subscribe to them? This is a question we might ignore as long as
we allow ourselves the illusion that we live in worlds apart. It is a different
matter altogether when, as happened this week, worlds collide.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: 2 photos: JERUSALEM HAREDIM have been rioting over the municipality's
decision to allow an unattended parking lot to operate on the Sabbath, and the
police detention of a haredi mother suspected of severe child abuse. BEIT TICHO.
Only a few hundred meters from the riots, but seemingly a world apart. (Credit:
Ariel Jerozolimski)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 22, 2009 Wednesday
Dump the CEIRPP
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 724 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
Over the years, the United Nations has done its fair share to prolong and
exacerbate the Arab-Israel conflict. The explanation for this lies not with the
world body conceptually, and certainly not with the ethos of its founders. But
the UN can't but reflect the values shared by the bulk of its members, the
efforts of an enlightened minority notwithstanding.
With the arguable exception of General Assembly Resolution 181, which in 1947
called for the establishment of independent Jewish and Arab states - and which
the Arabs rejected out of hand - just about every subsequent UN/GA stand on the
conflict has been to Israel's detriment. The most recent pertinent GA
resolution, for instance, ES-10/18 of January 2009, basically regurgitated the
Palestinian position on Operation Cast Lead, codifying it in international law.
There are now 192 member-states in the UN, most of which maintain diplomatic
relations with both the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. In
practice, however, the PLO has a built-in majority for just about any resolution
it champions. Start with the 22-member Arab League and add (though allow for
some overlap) the 57- member Organization of the Islamic Conference, then throw
in "non-aligned" countries such as North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. The result
is that one would be hard pressed to come up with a single instance in which the
General Assembly sided with Israel against the Arabs. Not once has the GA
unequivocally reprimanded the PLO or Hamas for engaging in airline-hijackings,
bus bombings and other forms of anti-civilian warfare. Israel, in contrast, is
censured at every opportunity.
THE international body sank to its moral nadir on November 10, 1975, when the
General Assembly passed the odious Resolution 3379, by a vote of 72 to 35 with
32 abstentions, labeling the national liberation movement of the Jewish people -
Zionism - as a form of "racism." The fact that the resolution was revoked in
1991 by no means entirely removes the ethical stain with which the world body
remains tarnished.
But perhaps the one single most damaging step the organization took to
institutionalize its bias against the Jewish state came with the creation in
1975 of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinian People (CEIRPP).
Unlike the Kurds, Roma, Copts, Uyghur, Tibetans, and others peoples' who plead
for international support, only the Palestinian Arabs have a permanent UN-funded
body which does nothing but agitate on their behalf.
As part of a revolving door of injustice, each year the GA meets to "discuss"
the "Question of Palestine" and each year it passes the recommendations of the
CEIRPP. The biases of the committee have metastasized throughout the UN system
owing to its ability to poison attitudes toward Israel from within. It is the
CEIRPP which came up with the charade known as the "International Solidarity Day
with the Palestinian People," held annually on November 29, and which sponsors
an array of meetings, seminars and conferences targeting Israel.
The committee - which convenes again today and tomorrow in Geneva - is comprised
of Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Cyprus, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Lao
People's Democratic Republic, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Namibia,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey and
Ukraine.
It will not question the Palestinian decision to reject former prime minister
Ehud Olmert's magnanimous 2008 peace offer. It will not tell the Palestinians
that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's seminal Bar-Ilan speech offers a way
forward toward. It will not tell the Palestinians to end their boycott of the
peace negotiations. The CEIRPP will never call on Hamas to recognize Israel, end
terror and accept previous Palestinian commitments - as demanded by the Quartet.
Of course, the committee will do none of these things - because its raison
d'etre is not peace but the vilification of Israel.
That is why this newspaper endorses a campaign initiated by the New York-based
the Anti-Defamation League urging UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to dismantle
the committee on the grounds that it is the "single most prolific source of
material bearing the official imprimatur of the UN which maligns and debases the
Jewish state."
The CEIRPP is also an obstacle to peace - it needs to go.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 22, 2009 Wednesday
Letters
BYLINE: Chaim A. Abramowitz, Raymond Cannon, Colin L. Leci, Joe Briscoe, P.
Yonah, Michael D. Hirsch, P. Brill, Moshe Dann, J. Petrook, Neal Rothner
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1170 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Who reports the news
Sir, - What an idea: News organizations should be taken away from the
industrialists and given to the government to insure their impartiality. Even
loonier, BBC and NPR are offered as the archetypes of fair reportage.
Has journalism Prof. Theodore Glasser viewed or read the products he is touting?
And does that mean the BBC and NPR are getting it right about Israel?
Surely it always depends on whose ox is being gored - but the notion that we
must control who is allowed to report the news only ensures that just one
viewpoint will survive. And it does not take a professor of journalism to
realize how bad an outcome that would be ("'A newspaper is as important to a
community as a fire department,'" July 21).
CHAIM A. ABRAMOWITZ
Jerusalem
JFS lesson
Sir, - As a former chairman of the JFS Governors (1987-1993), I unreservedly
applaud "The JFS lesson" (Editorial, July 21), which not only identified the
immediate and wider issues raised by the Court of Appeal decision but accurately
signaled the pitfalls of any ill- thought-out reaction, assuming the judgment
stands.
But disregarding for the moment the technical aspect of construing the wording
of the Race Relations Act, there is a definite political and social climate in
the Western democracies to disparage and eradicate all forms of ethnic
discrimination - real or perceived; a climate the law will inevitably reflect.
The last thing the Anglo-Jewish community needs is to be seen explaining, let
alone defending, an admissions policy for the school that is legally designated
racist.
RAYMOND CANNON
Netanya
Sovereignty
over Jerusalem
Sir, - Re "PM flatly rejects US demand to halt J'lem housing project" (July 19)
was spot-on that Jerusalem is the "unified capital of Israel and the capital of
the Jewish people, and sovereignty over it is indisputable." It was the
irresponsibility of previous prime ministers in not emphasizing the special
status of Jerusalem that has resulted in external interference with our
sovereign capital.
In respect of US demands, it is time to remind the US, UK and EU that this
property is adjacent to the Jewish neighborhoods of Shimon Hatzadik and Nahalat
Shimon established in 1891, nine years prior to the settlement of Sheikh Jarrah
being established. Furthermore, Ordinance Survey maps produced by the Survey of
Palestine August 1925 and subsequent until the end of the Mandate show little
significant residential development in east Sheikh Jarrah apart from the mufti's
house.
The world needs reminding that this is the area where the murder, in cold blood,
of 78 doctors and nurses took place on April 13, 1948 by Palestinian Arabs on
their way to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, while the British forces
remained aloof. The massacre was part of the Arab plan for the ethnic cleansing
of Jerusalem in 1948, planned by none other than the Grand Mufti Haj Amin
el-Husseini.
COLIN L LECI
Jerusalem
Shout it from
the rooftops
Sir, - I was delighted to read that Europe's Court of Human Rights has upheld a
ruling that it is "illegal and discriminatory to boycott Israeli goods"
("European rights court rules boycotts of Israel is unlawful discrimination,"
July 20). In summary, the court, consisting of six judges, ruled that this
judgment applies to all the countries of the European Union.
I am at a loss, however, to understand why you placed such an important news
item on an inside page. For someone like myself, the constant barrage of
anti-Israel calls for boycotts from Trade Unions and Academic Institutions has
been, to say the least, most depressing.
Now at last various Jewish organizations can challenge on EU legal grounds the
validity of calls for boycotting Israel. I would like to see this momentous
ruling receiving the much greater publicity, both national and international,
that it deserves.
JOE BRISCOE
Dublin
Don't whitewash this
Sir, - I can't help wondering if the reason we are witnessing such a strong
reaction by the ultra-haredi community to the case involving the alleged
systematic starving of a young child is an attempt to discourage the authorities
from investigating whether or not this is an isolated case of a sick, distraught
woman, or only the tip of the iceberg and child abuse is rampant in certain
sections of ultra-religious communities.
What part did the father play in this case? I find it hard to believe he was
unaware and yet chose to ignore the problem, placing the life of the child at
great risk.
I saw a picture of the abused child on television and the sight gave me
nightmares reminiscent of the Holocaust.
This crime should not be whitewashed and the mainstream haredi movement should
not be held responsible for the actions of a group of deranged extremists. I
implore the proper authorities to find answers to these problems and not allow
themselves to be intimidated by the extremists ("Suspected child-abuser skips
court-ordered psychiatric review," July 20).
P. YONAH
Shoham
A solution, at last
Sir, - As I read about the latest civil unrest by haredim in Jerusalem
("Jerusalem woman suspected of starving three-year-old son for months," July
15), I realized we could kill two birds with one stone. Put up a wall around Mea
She'arim, designate it the capital of the new Palestinian state, and let all the
violence-prone anti- Zionists live together!
MICHAEL D. HIRSCH
Kochav Yair
Stink 'em, that'll sink 'em
Sir, - If those members of the haredi community who are innocent bystanders of
the riots feel they are being unjustly penalized, their rabbis should speak out
clearly and forcefully against the lunatic fringe who, besides behaving in a way
totally contrary to Jewish law, are turning parts of the holy city into a war
zone.
I note that the police are using water cannons to disperse the rioters. Would it
not be more effective if they used "skunk bombs," as did the IDF, which has been
very successful in dispersing violent demonstrations?
P. BRILL
Jerusalem
Not very kosher
Sir, - If the kashrut of the Iowan Agriprocessors factory could be questioned
because of the working conditions there, shouldn't the same apply to the Badatz
kashrut certification, whose owners, the Eda Haredit, have been supporting
violent, illegal actions?
In New York, the J&J brand of dairy products is Satmar-Neturei Karta, which is
part of the Eda Haredit.
MOSHE DANN
Jerusalem
Talk about divisive
Sir, - That our transport minister is investing his energy in something so
divisive and non-productive as the elimination of Arabic place names hallowed by
time and use seems to indicate an attempt to divert attention from his inability
to do anything constructive, such as enforcing legislation to drastically
curtail the horrific death toll on our roads ("'Yerushalayim'" or 'Jerusalem'"?
July 14).
J. PETROOK
Herzliya
Sir, - The primary purpose of a road sign is to inform drivers. The Hebraizing
of road signs do not serve this purpose and are confusing to non-Hebrew
speakers.
Let's keep Hebrew Hebrew; English English; and Arabic, Arabic. Then we can
understand one another.
NEAL ROTHNER
Hashmonaim
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The Jerusalem Post
July 22, 2009 Wednesday
Our ultimate push for justice
BYLINE: GREG SCHNEIDER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 830 words
HIGHLIGHT: It is painful to imagine that any 75- or 80-year-old Jew is forced to
decide between food, heat or medicine. That a Holocaust survivor faces such
decisions is totally unacceptable. The writer is the incoming executive vice
president of the Conference on Jewish Material Clams Against Germany (Claims
Conference).
When asked, the great scholar Hillel summed up the entire Torah on one foot:
"V'ahavta lere'acha kamocha, you shall love your neighbor as yourself,"
explaining that the rest is commentary.
As I enter a position of great responsibility, as the executive vice president
of the Claims Conference, I would like to suggest this modern day adaptation:
Every Holocaust victim deserves to live their remaining years in dignity, and
the rest is indeed commentary.
Currently we are faced with the intolerable situation of up to 26,000 Holocaust
victims eating their meals in soup kitchens every day. It is unerringly painful
to recognize that 64 years after the war, after the liberation, the heroes of
the Jewish people - tens of thousands of them - Jews who were in camps,
ghettoes, hiding, false identity, partisans and Jews who fled from Nazi terror
are so impoverished that they can't afford to buy their own food or, if they do,
it is instead of medicine or rent.
It is painful to imagine that any 75- or 80-year-old Jew, in the year 2009, is
forced to decide between food, heat or medicine. That a 75- or 80-year-old
Holocaust survivor faces such decisions is totally unacceptable.
However in the world we live today these are choices that are made in Buenos
Aires, in Bnei Brak, in Brooklyn and in Belarus. But no matter where, hunger is
hunger.
It is incumbent on me to see that this situation ends as speedily as possible.
TO MEET this challenge, the Claims Conference has to reach certain
understandings with the German government. Thus, we have been urgently
negotiating with the German government to provide for the social needs of aging
Holocaust survivors. Particularly to provide necessary funds for home care so
that survivors may receive the support they need to remain in their own homes,
which is a matter of utmost importance to many.
There are around 8,000 survivors who were in camps, ghettos and endured forced
labor who still do not receive any pension. There are survivors of the camps who
are not entitled to the monthly payments, made by the Claims Conference to
others who may have been right alongside them. This must change.
There are more than 100,000 Nazi victims in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union who are ineligible for indemnification under the "Hardship Fund" simply
because they did not leave their home country for over half a century. Is it not
right that two Jews who together fled the Einzatsgruppen should now be treated
differently based on where they live today. This must change.
Social welfare needs are urgent and ever increasing. Holocaust victims are more
likely to suffer certain illnesses and conditions than their elderly
counterparts, due largely to the deprivations and persecution of their youth,
yet in many cases cannot receive the care they need due to financial
constraints. This also must change.
The Claims Conference has achieved much in its first 58 years. I would suggest
far beyond what Dr. Nahum Goldmann and Saul Kagan ever envisaged in 1951. But
now, as we approach the final chapter, our actions in the next few critical
years will determine how the story ends.
WE KNOW that funding from property in the former East Germany will deplete many
years before significant survivor needs abate. A detailed analysis of needs, a
projection of those needs in the years to come and the resources available to us
to meet those needs clearly indicates that additional sources of funding must be
identified and secured.
In partnership with the World Jewish Restitution Organization, we must continue
working to attain full restitution for Jewish assets stolen during the
Holocaust. Survivors, heirs and the Jewish people have the right to receive what
was unjustly taken from them. We constantly demand that governments recognize
the justness of this cause and react accordingly. Restitution of assets is the
final chapter of the legacy of the Holocaust, and one that we cannot allow to
remain unfinished or unrealized.
The Claims Conference is a consequence of the Shoah, deriving its meaning from
honoring those who were murdered and finding some measure of comfort for those
who survived. Over the years, the message has sometimes been lost among some
groups of survivors. We have worked hard on this issue but more needs to be
done. The Claims Conference is of survivors and for survivors. It is our job to
send the message that the Claims Conference is home to all survivors.
Though all of these challenges are great, so are our strengths. The Claims
Conference is an international coalition, bound by common purpose, driven by
irresistible moral imperative and unified in a determination to succeed, with a
resolute understanding of what is at stake. Ultimately, there can be no true
reparation made to Holocaust victims and nothing the Claims Conference achieves
can truly be called justice. Nevertheless, we must strive to ensure that every
Holocaust victim lives their remaining years in dignity, and the rest is indeed
commentary.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2009 Tuesday
The JFS lesson
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 694 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
The decision earlier this month by a British appeals court, holding that the
admissions policy of the country's largest Jewish school was illegal,
underscores a schism within the Jewish world over identity, conversion and the
nature of our civilization.
The school, JFS, was chartered in 1732 under Orthodox auspices but had long
maintained an enlightened approach toward all segments of the community. The
litigation came about because JFS now admits only converts who meet the
standards of the haredi-oriented London Beth Din, which is out of touch with the
majority of Britain's 260,000 Jewish people.
It's doubtful that most of JFS's 1,900 students lead Orthodox lifestyles, though
the court decision does not affect those students already at the school.
The case at hand resulted from the school's refusal to admit a new boy whose
mother had been converted by the Liberal stream. His parents divorced; she left
the fold, and the boy is being brought up by his halachically Jewish father.
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's office refused to certify the child as Jewish - a
necessary step for JFS admission - because his mother did not have an Orthodox
conversion. The father challenged the rejection in court.
He was supported by the Lightman family, whose children were also barred from
JFS. Kate Lightman was converted by an Orthodox Bet Din in Israel and does lead
an Orthodox life. She was married by an Orthodox rabbi in New York to a kohen -
a member of the priestly class which brought animal sacrifices during Temple
times. A strict constructionist interpretation of Halacha would, arguably, bar a
kohen from marrying a convert. Hence Sacks held that Lightman's conversion was
insincere and that the couple's children were not Jewish; and thus ineligible to
attend JFS.
In a third case, unrelated to the litigation, JFS barred the children of Helen
Sagal, though she too was converted by an Orthodox Beit Din in Israel, on the
grounds that the family no longer leads an Orthodox lifestyle.
THE COURT of Appeal found that using ethnicity or race of the mother as the
criterion for entry rather than faith, however defined, breached the Race
Relations Act. Without taking sides on the JFS case, the Board of Deputies
opposes this decision because of its ramifications for all Jewish schools.
JFS tried to appeal the case to the House of Lords, but the court denied
permission. The school is likely to pursue a direct petition to the Lords, but
this could take time, and there is no guarantee of victory even if the case is
heard.
As Simon Rocker of The Jewish Chronicle reported, JFS will now have to rewrite
its entry rules; instead of being based on the lineage of an applicant's mother,
admission will be based on religious observance - such as synagogue attendance.
But as Prof. Geoffrey Alderman points out, the school has painted itself into a
corner. If it produces narrow Orthodox criteria to measure observance, it will
transform itself into a haredi institution; and if they are very broad, what's
the point?
Yet is JFS even capable of setting middle-of-the-road faith criteria? How will
it respond to families that are observant but affiliated, say, with the
Conservative or Reform movements?
It's a pity that a school which played so pivotal a role in British Jewish life
now finds itself in the clutches of haredi obduracy. Fortunately, a new cross-
denominational school is scheduled to open in 2010.
THE JFS controversy is a larger dilemma in microcosm. Those who favor greater
insularity and artificially enforced homogeneity, who insist uncompromisingly
that they alone are privy to God's purpose, will continue to advocate for a
Judaism that is unwelcoming.
The Jewish majority in the Diaspora as well as in Israel - running the gamut
from neo-Orthodox to progressive, yet also embracing the affiliated secular -
need to develop sensible answers, rooted in Jewish law and tradition, to the
issues of identity and conversion.
In so doing they will be hammering home the point that Judaism is a thriving and
evolving civilization rooted in sacred history, religious ritual, a shared past
and the sense of a common destiny.
It is not synonymous with haredism.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2009 Tuesday
Animal lessons
BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 905 words
HIGHLIGHT: Pets can teach us how to make our spouse or family member feel loved
and special. NO HOLDS BARRED. The writer's upcoming book is The Blessing of
Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing Spiritual Hunger. www.shmuley.com
What is it about Americans that they can connect with pets but not with members
of the opposite sex?
On a weekend trip with my family, I was amazed to discover an upscale,
beautifully decked out store selling healthy, organic food - for dogs. In a
country where one out of three Americans is overweight or obese, we ourselves
may overeat. But not Fluffy. No, we're going to make sure he lives a healthy,
nutritious life, even if it costs an arm and a leg.
As someone who has written about all the vagaries of the modern-day singles
scene for 15 years, I thought I had seen it all: the loneliness, the
manipulation, the heartache. But then there was the young woman I met recently
in a Manhattan office. Seeing that an enormous Great Dane sat next to her desk,
I inquired as to why the dog was at work and not at home. Her reply startled me.
"My husband and I divorced about six months ago and we share joint custody of
the dog. And since she'll be going back to him this weekend, I want to spend as
much time with her as possible."
Custody battles over children are so '90s. Since singles have largely abandoned
marriage in favor of living together and replaced having children with having a
pet, it makes perfect sense for men and women to battle over who gets to keep
the smooch. My Manhattan friends tell me that the joint pet custody thing is
quite common, and they were surprised I had never encountered it. But I was
startled to see that even after a husband and wife's love for each other ends,
the love for the canine continues.
Then, of course, there was Hurricane Katrina and the news stories that
highlighted the many who stayed behind in New Orleans rather than clear out
ahead of the monster storm, because they would never abandon their pets. We own
a cute little puppy, so I can understand the sentiment and find it hard to
imagine abandoning her to danger. Still, the idea of risking one's children's
lives for the sake of the family cat might strike some as extreme.
THERE ARE two ways to view the modern American obsession with pets. One is that
it is a healthy manifestation of affection for all of God's creatures. The other
is that it a sign of a lonely generation of men and women, desperate to nurture
a creature that gives them the love that is not forthcoming from more
traditional sources.
I often ask the most obsessive pet owners why they are so attached to their
pets. I usually hear the same response. The pet gives them more love than any
person - more than a spouse, a sibling or even parents. The dog loves you just
the way you are. But the boyfriend tells you that your butt looks fat and you
should go to the gym. Your husband ogles other women. But the cat never cheats.
Men feel the same way. As my friend Roger explained, "When I come home after a
long day's work, my wife is usually on the phone and the kids are watching TV.
Almost no one even notices that I walked through the door. But Laraby, my golden
retriever, goes nuts. He runs up to me and almost knocks me down. He wags his
tail. It's like he's been the waiting the whole day for me. And it makes me feel
incredibly special. My wife complains that I watch too much TV. But the dog just
cuddles up next to me and let's me be."
WHICH GOT me thinking. What everyone wants in life is to be special. We all fear
ordinariness and each of us is born with an innate human desire to establish our
uniqueness. But here's the catch. We can never make ourselves feel special.
Someone else has to do it for us. And that's what human love is all about. It's
about someone prioritizing you, focusing on you, pampering you - all because
you're special.
But in an age that is as self-absorbed and as narcissistic as ours, we're
finding it incredibly difficult to make others feel special. We don't love
ourselves enough to love others. So we soak in almost every available morsel of
attention that is out there in the ether, leaving almost none for others to
enjoy. And that's why we do such a poor job of succeeding in modern
relationships. Because narcissism makes it virtually impossible to make someone
else feel special. So the person you're with in the relationship ends up feeling
ordinary and alone.
Into this breach step our pets of every variety, but especially dogs and cats.
They are the last remaining living creatures in our vicinity who generally have
no problem showing affection. They wag their tails when you come home, they lick
your face, they sleep next to you and keep you warm. They bark if anyone gets
near. They guard and protect you. And suddenly, with the pooch's love, you feel
special all over again.
Forget the fact that in reality they can never really make you feel special
because they cannot provide the corroboration of an equal. Less so can they
provide the intimate conversation, sound advice or gentle rebuke of a healthy
and purposeful relationship. No matter, in this lonely age we'll take what we
can get.
The Talmud said 2,000 years ago that human beings can learn modesty from a cat
because the cat always covers its waste. Perhaps the modern variation of this
theme would be that we humans can learn love and how to make each other feel
special from a pet.
And it's so easy that it boggles the mind that we don't practice it more. It
involves three simple steps:
1. Always show your spouse or child or friend that you're happy to see them.
2. Be effusive with displays of affection.
3. Protect that which you claim to love.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: ON PET AIRWAYS, the first-ever all-pet airline, dogs and cats
fly in the main cabin of a Suburban Air Freight plane, lined with carriers in
place of seats. What does America's modern obsession with pets teach us about
ourselves? (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2009 Tuesday
Letters
BYLINE: David Geffen, Trudy Gefen, Efraim Cohen, Stuart Katsoff, Candy Shinaar,
Harold Lewin, Michelle Aaron, Menachem Dayagi, Gita Hazani
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1137 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
We were just...
Sir, - It was not as dramatic as Charles Krauthammer hoped for, but I did
experience the moon landing - twice ("The moon we forgot," July 20).
For the actual event, my wife and I were living in New York. As the arrival time
on the moon neared, it seemed as if almost every childhood illness was
descending on our two children, aged three and two, and we forgot all about it.
Then on July 19, 40 years ago, we received a phone message from the Conservative
Synagogue: "Watch TV tomorrow night as God blesses our astronauts." And we did.
In 2000, we took our daughter and her three kids from the Golan Heights to the
US. We flew south to Orlando, Disney being the main goal. Our daughter said,
"Why not visit Cape Kennedy? It's so close."
We were amazed at the sight of those launch pads, huge rockets and other space
vehicles. Sitting in an enormous hangar, we watched, very closely, a rerun of
the moon landing. With the actual voices from Houston and the space capsule - a
board of flashing lights capturing the Eagle's exact descent, moment by moment -
the six of us felt the thrill of a great technological step forward. Together,
we recited the Sheheheyanu prayer.
DAVID GEFFEN
Jerusalem
...over the moon
Sir, - "And that's the way it was..." (Editorial, July 20) said that "Israelis
could not view the live telecast of the first landing... our technology was not
that advanced." However, some of us did see the landing later on newsreels, on
TV.
At that time I lived in north Tel Aviv, and my delightful neighbors, the
Rosenfelds, had a television set. They invited me over in the evening to watch
the show and we sat there absolutely enthralled, drinking tea and munching
biscuits as we breathlessly watched mankind's historic, magical "first step" on
the moon.
TRUDY GEFEN
Kiryat Ono
Swiss cheek
Sir, - Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey offered a justification for
the June meeting between officials of her ministry and a Hamas delegation in
Geneva.
I could have understood (though disagreed with) an explanation that despite
Hamas's actions, it is essential that Hamas be brought on board if a real peace
agreement is to be reached.
That was not what Calmy-Rey said. In a statement breathtaking for its
intellectual dishonesty, she explained that her country does not have a list of
terrorist organizations, believing that while a person can be called a
terrorist, an organization cannot.
Where does Calmy-Rey think all those terrorists get their training, equipment
and support from? Who does she think is setting the policy, doing the planning
and sending out the people who blow up bombs and kill innocent people? Hamas's
headquarters are not just an empty office with a name on the door.
I assume she would contend that while the Allies were justified in fighting
against individual German soldiers, it would have been appropriate to continue
normal relations with Hitler's government because there was no such thing as an
aggressive, totalitarian Nazi state.
Wait a minute... Isn't that exactly what Switzerland did for much of WWII? Now
we know why ("For Switzerland, there are no terror organizations," July 17).
EFRAIM COHEN
Netanya
Holocaust 'perspective'
Sir, - I found Marilyn Henry's "They killed Gypsies, too" (July 13) unnerving.
The premise that one must not overlook other groups singled out by the Nazis for
the Final Solution might seem innocent enough, but it isn't. While we certainly
should not deny that other groups were targeted for extermination, we must keep
in mind that the camps were built with one, and only one group of people in
mind.
Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, Russian POWs and several
other identifiable groups were indeed victims, but the camps were operated
primarily for the purpose of killing one, and only one ethnically defined group:
the Jews.
By putting things in "perspective," one can lose perspective. Not all victims
were Jews, but all Jews were victims.
Might Holocaust "perspectives" lead to Holocaust denial?
STUART KATSOFF
Tel Aviv
Museum of Arab terror
Sir, - Re Michael Freund's suggestion that we "Build a museum of Arab terror"
(July 16): We do in fact already have such a place. The Intelligence and
Terrorism Information Center is located near Gelilot, north of Tel Aviv, and is
open to the public as well as maintaining an excellent Web site and information
service in English and Hebrew: (www.terrorism-info.org.il).
CANDY SHINAAR
Bat Hen
Let's put the boot
on the other foot
Sir, - I doubt the veracity of the rumor that prisoners guilty of terrorist
offenses now incarcerated in Israeli prisons are encouraged to place their boots
outside their cells at night for cleaning, and that they have a choice of
delivery of a preferred newspaper before breakfast. However, the recent report
on their multichannel TV, use of cell phone and facilities for studying for a
degree does suggest that our prison conditions are just a little too comfy.
Why can the authorities not withhold Red Cross visitation until that
organization issues a report on the condition of Gilad Schalit, held hostage by
Hamas for over three years? ("Limit visits to Hamas inmates," Editorial, July
8.)
HAROLD LEWIN
Jerusalem
The ins and outs
Sir, - If only everyone would spend as much energy on getting Jonathan Pollard
out as they did on getting Bernie Madoff in ("US philanthropist steps up for
Madoff victims," July 17).
MICHELLE AARON
Hashmonaim
Sowing strife
Sir, - We are in the period known as "the Three Weeks," culminating in the Fast
of Tisha Be'av, when we mourn the destruction of the Temple and the beginning of
our long exile, and Peace Now has decided that this is the time to start a new
"anti-settlement campaign" to fuel more division and animosity amongst us
("Peace Now embarks on new campaign claiming settlements are obstacle to peace,"
July 15).
Our sages tell us two reasons why we observe Tisha Be'av: because it marks the
night when the 10 biblical spies told our people not to fight for this land; and
because of sinat hinam - causeless hatred - i.e., the unnecessary strife and
division sown among our people in the Second Temple period.
It seems we have yet to integrate the harsh lessons of our 2,000-year exile.
MENACHEM DAYAGI
Tel Aviv
Hebrew & Arabic
religious satire
Sir, - We were pleased to see an announcement in Capital Calendar about our
panel discussion "The Boundaries of Religious Satire in a Democracy: Freedom of
Expression or Freedom of Incitement?" this Thursday, July 23, at the
Cinematheque, 7 p.m.
Unfortunately, there was an error: The discussion will take place in Hebrew and
Arabic, with simultaneous translation between the two languages, and not in
English.
Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking readers are invited to register at
info@mosaica.org.il or 050-9317575.
GITA HAZANI, Director Mosaica Center for
Inter-Religious Cooperation, Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2009 Tuesday
New era as British hostility reaches crescendo
BYLINE: ROBIN SHEPHERD
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 887 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Israel-haters smell blood, and they're going in for the kill. The
writer is director of international affairs at the Henry Jackson Society in
London. His book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel, will be
published in September.
It has been a terrible month for Israel's reputation in Great Britain. The
government has announced a partial arms embargo in protest of Operation Cast
Lead. The Charity War on Want has held a launch event for a new book entitled
Israeli Apartheid: A Beginners Guide. The Guardian has featured commentaries
promoting the apartheid analogy as well as accusing Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu of using Nazi language to defend settlement policy. The BBC and other
media outlets have given massive coverage to the recent Breaking the Silence
report slamming the IDF for committing "war crimes." Barely a day goes by
without a new front being opened against the Jewish state.
Those of us who follow such matters are always in danger of getting too close to
our subject. But, given that the IDF is not involved in combat operations, I for
one have never seen a period like it. On Friday, the Guardian ran two
anti-Israel opinion pieces on one and the same day.
There's something in the air. The Israel-haters smell blood, and they're going
in for the kill. It could be that we are on the threshold of a new era. But why
now?
The simplest explanation is that the relentless, unremitting stream of
anti-Israeli invective that has been pumped into the public mind in Britain over
the last decade or so was always going to reach critical mass at some point.
There is nothing particularly significant about the timing. The clock has been
ticking for years. Israel's time has simply come.
ULTIMATELY, THE simple explanation may be the best explanation. But there are a
number of other factors now at play which may have helped bring the situation to
a head.
First, the election of Barack Obama is perceived by many British opinion formers
as heralding a refreshing new approach to Israel from the United States. For
linguistic and historical reasons, political change in America is keenly felt in
Britain. Obama's comments calling for a freeze on the settlements have provided
the pretext for a renewed assault on Israel in general using the American
president's huge popularity as cover.
Second, the election of Netanyahu combined with the appointment of Avigdor
Lieberman as foreign minister have offered new opportunities to make the attack
personal. Even for Israel's most virulent detractors, it was not easy to mount a
hate campaign against Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. Netanyahu has been demonized
in Britain for years. Lieberman is portrayed as little better than a skinhead.
The wolves have been thrown fresh meat.
Third, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has recently recast the tone of British
pronouncements on the Middle East and relations with the Islamic world in a way
that serves the broader agenda of Israel's opponents. For example, in a speech
in Oxford in May and reported in the Guardian, he spoke of abjuring distinctions
between "moderates and extremists" - a line that, despite Foreign Office
denials, was widely interpreted as potentially paving the way for talks with
Hamas and other militant groups. He also referred to "ruined crusader castles,"
"lines drawn on maps by colonial powers" and to the failure "to establish two
states in Palestine."
Miliband cannot be held entirely responsible for the way his words are
interpreted. But it is precisely in such guilty, post-colonial terms that
Israel's opponents in Britain have always talked. To hear their own kind of
language echoing back at them from the leading figure in the UK foreign policy
establishment is likely to embolden them further.
Fourth, in a country whose opinion formers still fulminate about the invasion of
Iraq - sometimes portrayed as a venture inspired by Israel and Zionist
neoconservatives in America - the Netanyahu government's hard line stance on
Iran has got the alarm bells ringing again. Are we going to get sucked in to yet
another war in the Middle East for the benefit of Israel, they ask.
Fifth, Netanyahu's new emphasis on insisting that the Palestinians recognize
Israel as a specifically Jewish state is pushing Israel's opponents against the
wall and forcing them to declare themselves with greater clarity. Of course,
this does not just apply to Britain. But as a country whose opinion forming
classes rank among the most hostile to Israel in the Western world, the move has
provoked a particularly hysterical reaction. Since the Palestinians have made it
clear that they have no intention of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state,
British opponents of Israel have been forced to choose between accepting that
Palestinian rejectionism forms the real root cause of the conflict or themselves
rejecting the Jewish character of Israel and the whole Zionist enterprise to
boot.
PUT ALL of these factors together and it becomes easier to understand why a
situation which was awful to begin with has deteriorated so rapidly.
The obvious question now is where next. With the partial arms embargo in mind,
we should obviously be watching for an extension of formal sanctions. Outside
the governmental sphere, it is a racing certainty that unions will renew efforts
for trade and academic boycotts. Media hysteria will grow as each new assault on
Israel's integrity helps legitimize and validate the next. For the Jews of
Britain, the prospect of increasing anti-Semitism against this backdrop is all
too real.
The darkness is closing in.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: ACTIVISTS ACCOMPANY British parliamentarian George Galloway as
he arrives in Gaza. The 'Guardian' ran two anti-Israel opinion pieces on just
one day last week. (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2009 Tuesday
Ship of fools
BYLINE: ERIK SCHECHTER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 824 words
HIGHLIGHT: Our political system is a fractured partyocracy that panders to
ideological sectors, not real communities. The writer is a freelance military
reporter based in Tel Aviv.
So when exactly did we go nuts? With depressing regularity, our leaders say the
dumbest, most vile things. And we, the public, look up at this bloated,
cacophonous monstrosity of a government and think, "Everything is OK."
Take our public security minister, for example. This June, while reviewing
antidrug operations in southern Tel Aviv, Yitzhak Aharonovitch praised an
undercover cop for his grungy appearance, remarking that he looked an
"Araboush." Now for those who don't speak bigot, Araboush is an anti-Arab
epithet on par with, say, Jewboy or Hymie. In any sane Western democracy, an
official caught using such language could kiss his career good-bye. But not so
here.
When the media called out Aharonovitch for the slur, all he had to do was
apologize, then assure us that the comment did not represent his worldview. And
we moved on because no one who belongs to Yisrael Beiteinu could possibly be
racist, right? I mean, this is the same party that sought to institute loyalty
oaths, ban Israeli Arab political factions and prohibit commemoration of the
nakba - the defeat and dispossession of the Arab community during the War of
Independence.
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, has even suggested
disenfranchising Israeli Arabs by handing over their towns to a future
Palestine. Oh, and there was that stray comment about bombing the Aswan Dam in
Egypt.
Again, in a normal Israel, Lieberman would be left to rant on a soapbox next to
the meat-is-murder wackos and the Raelians. But what do we do with such a
dangerous demagogue? Make him foreign minister, of course! For the past couple
of months, Lieberman has been serving as our voice abroad. Well, sort of.
Lieberman is, in fact, so toxic that Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President
Shimon Peres have to pick up much of the diplomatic slack.
WHAT'S STRANGE is the fact that few people here seem troubled by this. Maybe
it's because we expect so little of our politicians that nothing shocks us
anymore. After all, we do have a housing minister who backs Jim Crow-style
segregation.
Lecturing the Israel Bar Association earlier this month, Housing Minister Ariel
Attias said that he sees it as his duty to keep Arabs out of Jewish communities
in the North. Mixed towns are dangerous, he said: "Look at what happened in
Acre." Yes, let's look at what happened in Acre. Last Yom Kippur eve, a pack of
youths attacked an Arab motorist after he had driven into a mostly Jewish
neighborhood. The assault then sparked an intercommunal riot that engulfed the
city.
None of this, though, matters to Attias. He doesn't care about healing wounds;
he just wants the Arabs hemmed in and out of sight. And we treat Attias like he
only speaks for himself, like what he does is happening on the moon.
Of course, not every minister in the government is prejudiced; some are just
idiots. A case in point is Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz. He actually
thinks that the future of Zion can be secured by changing Arabic place names on
highway signs.
Then there is Yossi Peled. This minister-without- portfolio suggests that we
boycott US defense contractors and sell arms to nations not on the White House's
BFF list to register our displeasure with Barack Obama's Mideast policies.
Apparently, Peled wants Israel to risk $3 billion a year in foreign aid,
lucrative defense projects with the US and superpower backing at the UN Security
Council to keep on building in the settlements.
A sign of still deeper dysfunction, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently
told the Americans that he'd remove illegal outposts if the US took a harder
line on Iran. In other words, Bibi would enforce our own laws only if first paid
a political bribe.
NOW, TO be fair, we've had crummy ministers before. The Bibi government is just
the reductio ad absurdum of our political system - a fractured partyocracy that
panders to ideological sectors, not real communities.
See, there's no such thing as an Israeli citizen. There are just haredi voters,
secular voters, Arab voters, etc., and we all vote as if no one else existed in
the country. Likewise, the politicians act as if they were responsible to no one
but their parties.
Accordingly, the system encourages behavior that borders on madness as even the
center must pay homage to the radicals. Indeed, if Netanyahu were to fire
Lieberman, Attias and Co., their parties would bring down his government.
The only way to end this farce is through regional representation. By dividing
the country into voter districts, we can make each and every Knesset member
beholden to the people. A first-past-the-poll system in each district would
likewise temper extremist positions as assorted factions would need to band
together to win.
Unfortunately, our current crop of "public servants" has no interest in fixing
the status quo. So to make a change, we will need to rally from the bottom up.
If we don't, we may wake up one day to find a country not worth defending.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN. Regional representation would temper
extremist positions as assorted factions would need to band together to win.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1049 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2009 Tuesday
Oh no, Jerusalem
BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1109 words
HIGHLIGHT: Encountering Peace. It is highly unlikely that Ras el- Amud will ever
be Israeli, just as Gilo will never be Palestinian. The writer is the co-CEO of
the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (www.ipcri.org). He was
also a member of prime minister Ehud Barak's expert committee on Jerusalem prior
to the Taba negotiations of January 2001.
Israel Radio reported that the Obama administration has demanded an immediate
halt to the construction of a Jewish housing project in an east Jerusalem
neighborhood. The report said that Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren
was summoned to the State Department and told that the project, which is being
developed by an American citizen, must stop. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
is at odds with the White House over the issue of building in post-1967
communities, but successive governments have held that land inside of
Jerusalem's municipal boundaries does not fall within the discussion of other
post-1967 lands.
"I read the newspaper headlines today about the construction of a neighborhood
in Jerusalem and I would like to reemphasize that the united Jerusalem is the
capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it
is cannot be challenged..." That is Netanyahu's response. But he is quite
mistaken. Israel's declaration of sovereignty over east Jerusalem has never been
accepted by the world. In fact, the international community has not even
officially recognized west Jerusalem as the capital. Not one government has its
embassy in Jerusalem today. Netanyahu's statement of our sovereignty in
Jerusalem not being challenged is at best wishful thinking.
JERUSALEM IS not a united, undivided city. It is, in fact, very divided.
Jerusalem is almost two separate cities. Perhaps the division is not east and
west - those old divides have been changed by 42 years of massive Israeli
construction in what was once the part of Jerusalem controlled by Jordan. It is
true that there is a Jewish majority, not only in west Jerusalem but also in
what is called east Jerusalem. The divide in Jerusalem is clearly on
national-ethnic lines - there is an Israeli Jerusalem and there is a Palestinian
Jerusalem.
The State of Israel officially controls both Jerusalems and claims sovereignty
over both, but in reality, other than using its power to demolish Palestinian
homes, collect municipal taxes and provide the most minimal municipal services,
Palestinian Jerusalem is not part of Israel. The State of Israel can continue to
use its power to build homes for Jews in Palestinian Jerusalem, but it is highly
unlikely that Ras el-Amud will ever be Israeli, just as Gilo will never be
Palestinian.
Even after 42 years of control over east Jerusalem, Jerusalem remains one of the
most segregated cities in the world. There are almost no integrated spaces in
Jerusalem. Israelis and Palestinian live in separate areas. Oddly, the lack of
planning for Palestinians in east Jerusalem has led to many Palestinians renting
and even purchasing flats in some Israeli areas, such as Neveh Ya'acov and
Pisgat Ze'ev. This is the law of unintended consequences at work. That law had
the same results with the construction of the Jerusalem separation walls that
have largely separated Palestinians from other Palestinians.
For years the Israeli policy was aimed at creating conditions that would
encourage Palestinian Jerusalemites to move outside of the municipal boundaries.
Satellite towns such as A-Ram, Samiramis, and Daharit al-Barid in the north part
of Jerusalem boomed with dense buildings providing large and relatively cheap
apartments for thousands of Palestinians from Jerusalem. They could move freely
between Ramallah and Jerusalem and, as east Jerusalem became increasingly cut
off from the Palestinian Authority areas and as a result of the permit regime
preventing Palestinians from entering Jerusalem, Ramallah increasingly became
the business and political interim capital. With the construction of the walls
around Jerusalem, however, tens of thousands of Palestinians moved back into
Jerusalem. Some unofficial statistics suggest that there are now almost 300,000
Palestinians in east Jerusalem while the satellite towns in the north have been
turned into ghost towns.
ISRAEL'S LACK of real governance in the Palestinian parts of Jerusalem has
created a huge slum with inner-city problems of poverty, crime, drugs, school
delinquency, filth, untreated sewage and human despair. Ten minutes from the
center of Israel's capital are parts of the city that look like the Third World.
There is an immediate need for 1,700 classrooms to be built for Palestinian
children. The rising crime rate has not increased a willingness of the police to
address the need to provide protection to the citizens of east Jerusalem, even
though that crime creeps across the divide into Jewish neighborhoods.
There is a real void of governmental authority in Palestinian Jerusalem. Before
the second intifada, Israel allowed the PA's Preventive Security Service to
unofficially function there. Today there is no authority and the void is being
filled by Hamas and Hizb al-Tahrir. Once again the law of unintended
consequences at work.
When Israel and the Palestinians signed the Declaration of Principles in
September 1993, they agreed that the future of Jerusalem would be negotiated.
When they signed the interim agreement two years later, they restated that they
would negotiate the future of Jerusalem. In the Wye River agreement of October
1998, Netanyahu agreed not to take any unilateral action that would change the
status of the territories to be negotiated.
In the trilateral (US, Israeli, Palestinian) statement at the end of the Camp
David summit in July 2000, the parties stated: "The two sides understand the
importance of avoiding unilateral actions that prejudge the outcome of
negotiations and that their differences will be resolved only by good-faith
negotiations." The US backed road map from 2003 explicitly stated that Jerusalem
was part of the deal that had to be negotiated: "final, permanent status
resolution, including on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements..."
In November 2007 in the joint statement of the Annapolis conference, both sides
agreed that "in furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine,
living side by side in peace and security, we agree to immediately launch good
faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all
outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in
previous agreements."
Netanyahu can declare from today till eternity that Jerusalem is the eternal
undivided capital of Israel, but that will not make it so. Almost the entire
world would like to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but that will not
happen until they also recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the state of
Palestine. Israel's sovereignty over all of Jerusalem is only unchallenged by
the government of Israel, not by anyone else.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: EVEN AFTER 42 years, Jerusalem remains one of the most
segregated cities in the world. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
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1050 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2009 Tuesday
Holocaust denials
BYLINE: AVI SHAFRAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 857 words
HIGHLIGHT: Maintaining the special linkage of the Holocaust to Jews is becoming
politically incorrect. The writer is director of public affairs for Agudath
Israel of America.
Never had the appearance of a word on a page so shocked me. It just made no
sense. Those English letters, in that order, simply didn't belong there.
It was nearly 20 years ago, in the library of a Jewish day school in Providence,
Rhode Island where I was teaching at the time. The word was "Holocaust" and it
so discombobulated me because the book I had opened had been published in the
late 1800s.
Even stranger, it was an English translation (likely the first one) of the
Mishna, the backbone of the Talmud.
After a moment's reflection on that fact, I realized I hadn't gone mad. In
context, the word was how the translator had rendered the Hebrew word ola - a
sacrifice in the times of Jerusalem's Holy Temple that, unlike all other
offerings, was burned in its entirety on the altar, without any portion set
aside for human consumption. "Holo" in Greek means "entirely" and "caust" means
"burned."
Indeed, whoever first applied the word to what occurred on the European
continent over the years 1939-1945 may well have chosen it because of its Jewish
source. After all, the Third Reich aimed to rid the world of Jews, considering
them the ultimate, mortal enemy of civilization. And, when all was tragically
said and done, Hitler and his helpers in fact succeeded in murdering nearly two
out of every three European Jews - if not an ola, staggeringly, devastatingly
close.
OTHERS, TO be sure, were persecuted and killed by the Nazis too: Romani (Roma
and Sinti peoples), political dissidents, criminals of various sorts, physically
and mentally disabled people, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Poles and Slavs.
But the Endlssung - the "Final Solution" - was for "der Judenfrage" - "the
Jewish question." There was no "Romani question" or "Homosexual question." The
Nazis hated many types of people and for a variety of reasons, but they singled
out only one group of people for utter destruction. The disabled and homosexuals
were persecuted only in the Reich, not in territories the Nazis occupied. The
Romani, in the words of historian Alex Grobman, "did not have to be annihilated
completely." That was a fate reserved for the Jews alone.
Even in his final moments, Hitler obsessed over the Jews, charging his followers
shortly before his suicide to demonstrate "merciless resistance against the
universal poisoners of all peoples, international Jewry." Thus there were no
speeches like the Reich Organization leader's 1939 "The Jews or Us" ("There is
no room in the world for the Jews any more. The Jew or us, one of us will have
to go") about Poles. No book like 1937's The Eternal Jew (which sought to
graphically portray Jews as subhuman) about Slavs. No Mein Kampf ravings about
the "peril" posed by the disabled. And no issues of Der Sturmer on newsstands
with the motto "The homosexuals are our misfortune!" on the cover page.
There is a reason, in other words, why the Holocaust is most readily associated
with the destruction of European Jewry, why the Berlin Holocaust memorial - the
monument that stands in the maw from which the Holocaust emerged - is called
Denkmal fYr die ermordeten Juden Europas - the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
Europe." It shows no insensitivity to any of the groups that suffered under the
Third Reich to appreciate the straightforward fact that only one was identified
as a noxious threat to humanity itself; that only one was targeted for total
genocide - both within and without Germany's borders - that none suffered the
loss of life that the Third Reich inflicted upon the Jewish people.
AND YET, maintaining the special linkage of the Holocaust to Jews is becoming
politically incorrect.
The recent controversy surrounding the Holocaust Memorial Mall in Sheepshead Bay
is a case in point. It already bears an inscription recognizing other victims of
Nazi persecution, including homosexuals. But an active member of a "gay
synagogue" campaigned for a more prominent set of stone markers recognizing Nazi
victims others than Jews. When the city acceded, New York State Assemblyman Dov
Hikind protested what he saw as a subtle devaluing of the special nature of the
Jewish people's singular targeting by the Nazis.
Hikind was subsequently taken to task by, among others, the New York City
Council speaker and the mayor. More recently, two candidates for a City Council
seat attacked a third one for the sin of having been endorsed by Hikind. One of
the candidates intoned that he "would never compromise my principles by having
an endorsement like that," and labeled "outrageous" the contention that, as he
put it, "there are two classes of victims in the Holocaust." A writer in The
Jerusalem Post went so far as to compare the assemblyman's stance to Holocaust
denial.
No one, though, is denying many groups suffered, and greatly, under the Nazis.
But if there is any subtle denial in the air these days, if anything delicately
desecrates the history of the Holocaust, it is the reluctance of some to
recognize a profound and qualitative difference - the difference between the
Nazis' persecution of political enemies and "social misfits" and the visceral,
genocidal loathing they reserved for the Jews.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: THERE IS a reason why the Berlin Holocaust memorial is called
'Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.' (Credit: Bloomberg)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
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1051 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 20, 2009 Monday
And that's the way it was...
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 686 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
On July 20, 1969, at 10:18 p.m. Israel time - 40 years ago today - Apollo 11
astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first humans to walk on
the moon.
President Barack Obama will have to weigh the advice of a panel of experts due
to report in August and decide whether to spend an estimated $100 billion so
that Americans can return to the moon on the 50th anniversary of the first
landing.
Lunar colonies could serve as a stepping-stone for an eventual manned mission to
Mars. From the moon, astronauts might travel into deep space to the asteroid
Apophis, when it passes near Earth in 2021. Later they might reach Mars' moon,
Phobos. Some experts hope that humans could journey to Mars as soon as 2031.
Or should space exploration be relegated to cheaper robotic proxies? It's a
tough decision.
America finds itself $11 trillion dollars in debt. This year's budget deficit
alone is $482 billion. With a wobbly economy, rising unemployment, wars in
Afghanistan- Pakistan and Iraq, and millions of Americans without health
insurance, can Obama afford to be extravagant on space?
THE NIGHT of that moon landing, Americans were mesmerized by a grainy
black-and-white simulation of the Eagle approaching the moon. Millions were
tuned to CBS, where Walter Cronkite was anchoring coverage of the descent to the
lunar surface. Mission control called off the numbers until there were none left
- and Cronkite exclaimed: "Man on the Moon!"
A moment later came word from the astronauts: "Houston, Tranquility base here;
the eagle has landed."
Cronkite, who died on Friday at 92, recalled that despite years of preparation,
he was nearly speechless with joy. On earth, the War in Vietnam was taking its
toll; campus unrest and racial tension roiled. But all that was placed in
abeyance as eyes turned heavenward - via the miracle of television - to see
Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon, with the words: "That's one small
step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
This week, the Endeavour space shuttle with its seven- member crew docked with
the International Space Station, a structure now as large as a four-bedroom
house, presently home to 12 men and a woman - seven Americans, two Russians and
two Canadians. When this mission is over, the station will contain an "outdoor"
observatory. Only seven missions remain before the shuttle fleet is retired,
NASA says.
ISRAELIS COULD not view the live telecast of the first moon landing - our
technology was not that advanced. Israel Radio instead broadcast the news in
real time, translating each milestone into Hebrew.
The country tried to put aside its reality to share in the excitement. In Tel
Aviv and Jerusalem, the US Cultural Center was screening NASA films every 30
minutes.
Israel's victory in the Six Day War notwithstanding, a war of attrition raged on
with Egypt. And as Michael Collins, Armstrong and Aldrin were orbiting the moon,
the IAF shot down five Egyptian planes over Suez. Around the time the Eagle
rejoined Columbia in orbit, Jordanian artillery was shelling Beit She'an.
Israel's Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Nissan, prayed that the moon walk would
not deepen man's hubris, but that instead people would better appreciate the act
of Creation.
Both Egypt and Jordan devoted more news coverage to the moon landing than to
their war against Israel; not so Syria. Palestinian Arab terrorism continued
unabated: an attack in Hebron on Israelis making a pilgrimage to the Cave of the
Machpelah; the murder of a man waiting for a bus in Tel Aviv by an exploding
parcel.
As the astronauts splashed down safely, the IAF downed seven more Egyptian
planes after 40 enemy aircraft crossed the Suez Canal. In Haifa's outdoor
market, three bombs planted in watermelons detonated, injuring shoppers.
LOOKING back, it is heartening that Israel is now at peace with Egypt and
Jordan, though endlessly disquieting that Palestinian intransigence has
stalemated reconciliation on that front.
The exploration of space, meanwhile, is a constant reminder that all of us are
denizens of the third planet from the sun, and part of something far bigger than
meets the eye.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1052 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 20, 2009 Monday
A pause for serious self-reflection
BYLINE: JONATHAN S. TOBIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1205 words
HIGHLIGHT: Democrats need to put the Obama administration on notice. The writer
is executive editor of Commentary magazine and a contributor to its blog
Contentions at www.commentarymagazine.com.
When US President Barack Obama met with 15 representatives of American Jewish
organizations on July 13, Haaretz reported that he told them that he wanted to
help Israel achieve peace but that if they were to benefit from his
well-intentioned counsel, Israelis must "engage in serious self-reflection." The
breathtaking condescension toward the Jewish state that this remark betrays, as
well as the implicit dismissal of the last 16 years of Middle East history, says
a lot about Obama and the direction in which American foreign policy is heading.
The fact that Israel has already gone through several periods of serious
self-reflection and made costly sacrifices in terms not only of territory but in
blood has no significance for the president. Here a just a few items that the
president seems to think don't matter in assessing the situation: The failure of
a generation of peacemaking including the Oslo Accords and the successor
agreements associated with that process, the 2000 Camp David summit, the second
intifada, the withdrawal from Gaza, the subsequent use of that territory as a
terror base and the failed attempt just last year to get the Palestinian
Authority to take yes for an answer on statehood for its people. All have
apparently been swept down the White House memory hole. In the age of Obama,
like a fundamentalist religion that dates all events as being either before or
after a divine revelation, that which occurred prior to his election is
meaningless by definition.
Rather than play down his penchant for quarreling with Israel, Obama is proud of
it. Indeed, he asserts that such conduct is actually a virtue, since his
hammering of Israel is merely "honest talk" that should be interpreted as the
highest form of friendship.
Obama's obsession with picking a fight about growth in Jewish settlements in the
territories is a classic misdirection play. The US had already agreed that calls
for settlement freezes couldn't apply to those communities that it had
acknowledged Israel would keep in any peace agreement, let alone in Jerusalem.
But Obama has repudiated that pledge partly out of his determination that he
must invalidate everything his predecessor did, and partly because settlements
are a useful cudgel with which beat Binyamin Netanyahu and the rest of the
government Israelis elected only a few months after Obama's own victory.
EVEN MORE important, the entire premise upon which his demand for Israeli
reflection is based is false. So long as both the supposedly more moderate
Palestinian Authority and the extremist Hamas movement that governs Gaza have no
interest in peace on even the most generous terms that Jerusalem can offer - a
detail upon which the PA's leaders have been quite explicit - Obama's pressure
ploy is pointless. Though Obama speaks to Jewish groups of equal pressure on the
Arabs, everything that the administration has done and said in its short time in
office makes it clear that the president's sole target is the government in
Jerusalem, not the terrorists running Gaza or the corrupt Fatah functionaries in
Ramallah.
Taken together with his appeasement of the Arab and Muslim world as reflected in
his Cairo speech and a feckless policy of engagement on Iran that continues to
extend legitimacy to a regime that has already forfeited its credibility with
its own people, one would think that Obama would be in trouble with his Jewish
supporters. Though there have been rumblings from some Jewish leaders that
expressed worries about Obama's attitude to Israel, the passive response to the
downgrading of the alliance with Israel cannot be denied.
There are those who believe that the continued support for Obama can be traced
to a lack of enthusiasm on the part of most American Jews for Israel's current
government and settlements, though others go so far as to say that it also shows
a general lack of interest in, let alone support for Israel, among liberal Jews.
It is true that unlike the Israeli Left which has been completely marginalized
by the Palestinians' rejection of peace, the Jewish Left in the US is currently
riding high. The spectacle of the small J Street lobby - a group that exposed
its extreme nature last December when it opposed Israeli military efforts to
stop missile attacks on its southern towns from Gaza - strutting into the White
House alongside representatives of large mainstream groups illustrates the new
political reality of Washington in 2009.
But the overwhelming majority of American Jews who voted for Obama last year did
not back him because they anticipated that he would pick pointless fights with
Israel to advance a peace process that Palestinians scorn. Most did so because
they are partisan Democrats and share his views on domestic issues. But there is
no way that he would have won as much as three-quarters of the Jewish vote had
not most believed him when he claimed he was a supporter of Israel. Contrary to
the boasts of the left and the fears of the right, most Jewish Democrats still
care deeply about Israel.
IN RESPONSE to writers like myself who have called for Democrats to speak truth
to power and hold Obama accountable for his policies, some of those who vouched
for Obama during last year's campaign have said that the president's offenses
are not yet egregious enough to warrant a rebuke. Harvard Law professor Alan
Dershowitz, a man whose long and honorable record of support for Israel is
beyond question, attempted to defend Obama's positions in a recent op-ed in The
Wall Street Journal and then later in responses to critiques of it. He continues
to believe that having a popular liberal Democratic president who claims to be a
supporter of Israel is good for the Jews even if some of his policies are open
to question. But Dershowitz's half-hearted apologias betray a worry that perhaps
he was fooled by the president's campaign promises.
Jewish Democrats don't have to jump to the Republicans. If, as Dershowitz avows,
pro-Israel Democrats have influence on the administration, then let them use it
before things get even worse. It is worth recalling that in 2002, when
statements by secretary of state Colin Powell made it appear as if a Republican
administration was taking a similarly "evenhanded" approach to Israel's attempts
to defend itself against a Palestinian campaign of suicide attacks, conservative
evangelicals were not slow to act. This group, as integral to George W. Bush's
coalition as Jews are to Obama's, deluged the White House with calls for strong
support for Israel and got results.
Had a Republican done and said the same things that Obama has in the last six
months who can doubt that he and other Democrats would be demanding that Jewish
Republicans repudiate their party's leader? The question remains what will be
the tipping point for Jewish Democrats at which it will be impossible for them
to go on pretending that they did not elect the most hostile president to Israel
since the first George Bush? If the current trend continues without a strong
negative reaction from Jewish Democrats who raised money for Obama and voted for
him, then we are entitled to ask why they are either silent or rationalizing a
policy that they know is wrong.
jtobin@commentarymagazine.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: 2 photos: BARACK OBAMA giving a speech at a synagogue in Florida during
the 2008 presidential campaign. There is no way that he would have won as much
as three-quarters of the Jewish vote had not most believed him when he claimed
he was a supporter of Israel. OBAMA'S OBSESSION with picking a fight about
growth in Jewish settlements in the territories is a classic misdirection play.
(Credit: Bloomberg. Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved
1053 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 20, 2009 Monday
Letters
BYLINE: Fred Casden, Joyce Kahn, Elihu D. Richter, Zelda Harris, Roy Runds,
Anthony Luder, Ruth Posner, Jaime Krejner, M. Van Thijn
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1083 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Very scary
Sir, - Re your page 1 article about the "temporary marriages" of Iranian girls
before their summary execution, I had the following thought:
Imagine a Hollywood movie in which someone organized the murder of young women
and arranged for his henchmen to rape them before they were killed. These men
would be portrayed as homicidal maniacs and the whole point of the movie would
be their capture by the good guys.
But suppose that, instead, it turned out the chief villain was the head of a
foreign government; and that the movie climaxed with visits by important
dignitaries from other lands to negotiate with those who organized the murders
and rapes.
Not in Hollywood. That such a scenario might actually happen in the real world
is downright scary ("I had the 'honor' to 'temporarily marry' young Iranian
girls before their execution," by Sabina Amidi, July 19).
FRED CASDEN
Jerusalem
Doesn't she know?
Sir, - Doesn't Naomi Klein know that even after all our concessions over the
years, the Arabs are still not ready to recognize a negotiated Jewish state?
That despite the "blockade," 50 trucks of humanitarian aid pass through the
checkpoint to Gaza every day? That when a terrorist succeeds in killing our
people, fellow villagers dance in the street with joy?
And perhaps Klein doesn't know that over 1,000 people here died in terror
attacks between 1994-2005.
Perhaps it's time for her to do a little real research into the history of our
state and its Jews ("'The Jews' get-away-with-genocide-free-card,'" July 19) .
JOYCE KAHN
Petah Tikva
'Human experimentation'
Sir, - Re "Lower speed limits would have saved 600 Israeli lives in past decade"
(July 17): Prof. Lee Friedman of the University of Illinois, and not I, was the
chief author of the paper on long-term effects of raised speed limits in the US.
Friedman, with David Hedecker, used cutting-edge time series models from
statistics to dissect out the independent, persistent effect of raised speed
limits over a decade in the US, costing 12,000 lives. The models were advances
on methods Friedman and I applied over the years in the Injury Prevention
Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah.
It is sad that so many lives had to be lost over the years to "prove" the
validity of predictions made by Profs. Gerald Ben-David, Zvi Weinberger and
myself back in 1992, based on calculations on the back of an envelope using
simple equations derived from Newtonian models on the exponential relationships
between speed increases and road deaths.
At the time, we designated the government's decision an unethical exercise in
human experimentation. Better to have buried the idea of raising the speed limit
than to have buried the bodies.
Now the task is to expedite the implementation of the national speed camera
network. Based on results from Australia, the UK and France, 20 years of delay
have cost the lives of 4,000 Israelis.
Last week, 16 people died in road crashes. Speed cameras would have saved the
lives of seven or eight of them.
ELIHU D RICHTER MD MPH
Jerusalem
Sir, - How sad that Elihu Richter's work, which preceded by many years the
founding of the METUNA road safety organization in 1993, has still not come to
fruition.
In 1995, the MATBEA project - reducing road deaths in towns - the project of
Prof. Ben-David (inventor of the MAROM camera), Zvi Weinberger of the JCT and
Prof. Richter, with Metuna, cut speeds, injuries and deaths in Netanya by an
overall 69 percent over the previous year. Although the project was cut short,
Netanya's death rates stayed down for another two years.
The authorities said: "If this project succeeds, it will be in every town in
Israel." And succeed it did! What failed was the ineptitude of successive
governments and other road safety groups in adopting the model.
ZELDA HARRIS
Founder of METUNA
Tel Aviv
Social terrorism...
Sir, - Re "Haredim escalate J'lem riots over "blood libel" as police chief fumes
that "the Bible does not permit this" (July 17):
When will the Israeli government have the gumption to take preventive action
against the disruptive activities of the Neturei Karta, pseudo-Jews whose
fanatical beliefs and practices violate the broader, humane spirit of the Hebrew
faith?
The great mystery is why they continue to reside in Israel, which is anathema to
all they believe in.
ROY RUNDS
Tel Aviv
...should be uprooted
Sir, - Social terrorism is no different from any other kind and should be
uprooted. Offenders should have their houses destroyed, they should be
imprisoned and, in the case of the Neturei Karta and their friends, deported to
their buddies in Gaza.
ANTHONY LUDER
Rosh Pina
Black box
Sir, - In a major road accident, the first thing authorities look for is the
"black box," which can determine what happened to the person at the helm minutes
before he lost control.
This is the kind of thing one would most likely hear if every vehicle on the
road was legally bound to carry such a box:
"No more beer - let's finish the six-pack at home." "Must go, mom. There's a
police car ahead. I'll call you later." "So warm and cozy, I should really stop
for a nap." "Do you think we can make the ceremony? We have a quarter of an hour
to get there."
"She's such a worrier - I've often driven home after 1 a.m., the roads are
always empty." "The lights are changing... I can just make it." "Hang on, I'll
get you there in no time." "It's a minute to... let me switch over to the news."
"I should have turned left, I'll have to do a U-turn."
RUTH POSNER
Beit Shemesh
Waiting for Wallenberg
Sir, - Ron Feinberg rightly states that "Wallenberg was a genuine hero" ("In the
footsteps of Wallenberg," Travel, July 19).
What this courageous man accomplished in a few months, before the end of WWII,
is awe-inspiring. Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews owe him their lives.
We are proud that our foundation bears this hero's name. Our mission is twofold:
to research and divulge the legacies of the thousands of rescuers who, like
Raoul Wallenberg, risked their lives to save the persecuted ones and secure
credible answers regarding Wallenberg's fate.
This remarkable individual deserves to return home to his family. His mother and
stepfather could not bear the despair, and took their own lives. His elderly
step- siblings, Nina and Guy, are still waiting for him.
JAIME KREJNER, Vice-President
The International Raoul
Wallenberg Foundation
Jerusalem
Sir, - Can't we get a copy of Budapest's glorious Raoul Wallenberg Memorial to
enhance our capital's rather sorry-looking Wallenberg St.?
M. VAN THIJN
Jerusalem
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1054 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 20, 2009 Monday
Israel's new national consensus
BYLINE: BARRY RUBIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 991 words
HIGHLIGHT: The new paradigm merges both the conservative approach of security
and reciprocity and the liberal one of compromise. The Region
This could be the most important article I write this year. Israel has entered a
new era of thinking and policy in which old categories of Left or Right, hawk or
dove are irrelevant under a national unity government bringing together the two
main ruling parties.
How did this new paradigm arise? Between 1948 and 1992, the consensus was that
the PLO and most Arab states want to destroy Israel. When - or if - the day
comes that they're ready to negotiate seriously we'll see what happens.
Then came the Oslo agreement and a huge shift. The governing view was that maybe
the Palestinians and Arab states learned the cost of their intransigence enough
to make peace possible. The Left thought a deal could bring real peace; the
Right thought it was a trick leading to another stage of conflict on terms less
favorable to Israel. But both expected a deal to materialize.
The year 2000, the Camp David failure, the Syrian and Palestinian rejection of
generous offers and the second intifada destroyed illusions.
Since then, the country has groped for a new paradigm. Prime minister Ariel
Sharon offered unilateralism; prime minister Ehud Olmert and foreign minister
Tzipi Livni constantly offered more in exchange for nothing. But the more they
did so, the more international abuse Israel received.
NOW A NEW approach has finally emerged capable of reversing this situation. It
goes like this: Israel wants peace but doesn't hesitate to express not only what
it wants and needs but also what's required to create a stable and better
situation. To ensure that violence and instability really ceases requires:
* Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Without this step, the aftermath of
any "peace" agreement would be additional decades of Arab effort to destroy
Israel in all but - temporarily - name.
* Absolute clarity that a peace agreement ends the conflict and all claims on
Israel. Otherwise, the Palestinian leadership and much of the Arab world would
regard any "peace" agreement as a license for a new stage of battle, using
Palestine as a base for renewed attacks and demands.
* Strong security arrangements and serious international guarantees for them.
Have no doubt, these will be tested by cross-border attacks from Palestine.
* An unmilitarized Palestinian state (a better description than
"demilitarized"), with the large security forces they already have, enough for
internal security and legitimate defense but not aggression.
* Palestinian refugees resettled in Palestine. The demand for a "right of
return" is just a rationale for wiping Israel off the map through internal
subversion and civil war.
If Israel gets what it requires - and what successful peace requires - it will
accept a two-state solution, a Palestinian Arab Muslim state (the Palestinian
Authority's own definition) alongside a Jewish state, living in peace.
PART OF the new thinking is to understand that precise borders and east
Jerusalem's status, while important, are secondary to these basic issues. If
those principles are resolved, all else can follow.
This new posture is not one of desperately asserting Israel's yearning for peace
but rather saying: We're serious, we're ready, we're not suckers but we're not
unreasonable either. We want peace on real terms, not just more unilateral
concessions and higher risk without reward. Not experimenting with our survival
to please others. Not some illusory celebration of a two-state solution for a
week and then watching it produce another century of violence.
Is it really such a brilliant idea to rush into giving a state without serious
conditions to a Palestinian regime which has failed to govern competently what
it already has, daily broadcasts incitement to murder Israelis, is profoundly
corrupt, has already lost half its patrimony to a rival whose goal is a new
genocide but whose own most fervent wish is to merge with that rival, and whose
program is merely for the world to pressure Israel into handing it everything?
The best outcome would be if this program was met by Palestinian cooperation. If
they are suffering so under alleged occupation, if so desperate for their own
state, there's nothing in this offer they can't accept.
IF, HOWEVER, they prefer rejectionism, exposing their claims as false, that too
is acceptable. The truth would be known: The Palestinians and much of the Arab
world can't make peace with Israel because they don't want peace with Israel.
And that is because they don't want Israel to exist. Period.
Around this program, Jews outside Israel should rally, putting aside old
conflicts about who's more passionate about peace, who more concerned about
security. The same applies to other countries and those well-intended who want
to see a strategic situation more in accord with both their interests and
humanitarian considerations.
In this context, there is no more puerile and misleading notion than that
Israel's government has put forth a program encompassing a two-state solution
because of US demands or pressures. This is a plan that organically grew out of
the country's situation, experience and a broad national consensus.
A second notion this new paradigm rejects is the argument that either Israel is
so strong that it can give without receiving or so weak that it must do so.
Equally wrong is the notion that time is against Israel, a strong and vibrant
society surrounded by weak and disorganized neighbors. The strategic situation
has dramatically improved over the decades. It is a strong, confident society
visibly meeting the challenge of the modern economic and technical environment.
Finally, this new policy merges both the conservative approach - proper
suspicions and demands for security and reciprocity - and the liberal approach -
a proper readiness to compromise and desire for true peace - into one package.
Both elements are now blended in the thinking of the overwhelming majority of
Israelis. A new national consensus has emerged, strong and durable.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas's honor guard. If Israel
gets what it requires - and what successful peace requires - it will accept a
two-state solution. (Credit: AP)
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1055 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 20, 2009 Monday
Breaking the rules
BYLINE: MICHAEL DICKSON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 591 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer is Israel director of StandWithUs which educates about
Israel through student fellowships, speaker programs, conferences, written
materials and Internet resources. Soldiers testimony can be viewed at
www.soldiersspeakout.com.
It is clear from its latest report that the goal of Breaking the Silence is not
to bring offending soldiers to justice or even to encourage reforms in IDF
policy. If these were its goals, it would include names, ranks, facts, place
names and dates; it would have released a detailed report to the authorities to
encourage an investigation. Without this information, it is impossible to probe
the veracity of the claims.
The organization's efforts to defame Israel in the international arena are
successful. Despite the precedent of previous claims made against the IDF being
disproved, and without waiting for an investigation into the allegations,
supposedly reputable media organizations such as the BBC choose to report them
as fact. Defamation of Israel is the order of the day.
Breaking the Silence is misleading in its name and its aim. There is no silence
to break. Israel is an open and democratic society that regularly criticizes its
own actions, but this one-sided and shoddy report fails to stress the context of
the war - a battle against Hamas terrorists hiding behind civilians and it omits
names, ranks and facts about soldiers and their stories.
THE REPORT writers are keen to thank their funders, which shamefully include the
Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, Christian
Aid and OXFAM, two charities which have in the past launched vitriolic
anti-Israel campaigns, as well as the European Union which gave them $75,000 to
"contribute to an atmosphere of human rights respect and values" and "to promote
prospects for peace talks and initiatives." The EU is deceiving taxpayers if it
is telling them that their money paying for this shoddy report is helping to
promote peace.
If members of Breaking the Silence were sincere, they would be presenting
accurate facts about terrorism, the goals expressed in the charter of Hamas, the
deadly rocket fire coming from Gaza, the anti-Israel incitement and the ways the
Palestinians have contributed to perpetuating the conflict and to harming the
lives of ordinary Palestinian civilians. If they were sincere, they would be
raising awareness about the moral dilemmas the IDF faces. But this vital context
is missing from their account.
In response to this report, our organization set about filming testimonials and
uploading them to a Web site called Soldiers Speak Out - a platform for Israeli
soldiers to share their personal combat experiences with the world. The site,
created by soldiers to share their personal experiences of serving in the IDF,
contains testimonials from soldiers which contrast sharply with the reports of
alleged IDF misconduct made by Breaking the Silence.
Breaking the Silence is breaking the rules for any kind of serious reporting.
Its report is compiled from anonymous "testimony" from up to 30 people. In
contrast, the soldiers who feature on our Web site give testimony on camera
without their face blurred out and speak from their own personal experience.
The IDF has more than 700,000 citizen soldiers and reservists - thousands of
whom served in Gaza in the campaign against Hamas - who try to live up to its
high ethical standards. Attempting to slander an IDF campaign on the basis of
the anonymous reports is ridiculous.
It is unlikely that the international media will give the Soldiers Speak Out
site the kind of publicity they are currently lavishing upon Breaking the
Silence. When it comes to Israel, good news is no news, but, as in previous
occasions and despite those who exist to defame the IDF, the truth will out.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: OFF TO GAZA. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1056 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 20, 2009 Monday
'Mr. Sammler's Planet' revisited
BYLINE: ABE NOVICK
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 655 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer is based in Baltimore and works in communications.
To look into space is to look back in time. The starlight we see meeting us here
on Earth, from out there, was created light years ago.
Closer to home, peering up at the moon's reflective beam is to gaze on our
closest orbital companion in this lonely space and while doing so, we remember
our first walk together.
In 1969, while it seemed like the Earth was coming apart due to social and
political upheaval, the writer Saul Bellow created what's perhaps his most
politically grounded and fantastically unbound novel, aligning the forces taking
place on this planet with a future on the moon.
The book, Mr. Sammler's Planet, is about an elderly Holocaust survivor, who
after getting an eye knocked out by a Nazi's rifle butt and buried under a pile
of human beings is left for dead. Sammler crawls out, leaving his dead wife
behind, rebirthing himself and never losing an iota of his dignity as he sallied
forth to the future. We then find him, a man from the past replanted in an era
of tumultuous unrest, just as we embark on a future toward the moon.
By pitting his elderly Sammler against the tide of the 1960s and the "movement,"
Bellow lost many friends. He in turn divided himself off from the Left and
charted a new course.
Peering back into that time through one lens, and observing what split our
culture, is like looking at a distant, faint star today. After all, our
president is African-American, women have gained enormous strides and the youth
from the '60s are, well, in their 60s.
Through another lens, the old Left has morphed into MoveOn.org, while much of
the Right has shifted off the planetary charts. Both sides nevermore
magnetically polar opposites.
While 1969 further split a divided country, for one brief shining moment, the
residual light of JFK's Camelot captured our attention, our imagination and held
us together as we stared in amazement at what was taking place on the lunar
landscape.
IT'S STILL hard to fathom, that we were ever there, but after traipsing on the
moon, it's like we've fallen and we can't get up.
Upon reflection, to what end was it all aimed?
When Sammler finds a stolen manuscript called "The Future of the Moon," he reads
the first line, "How long will this Earth remain the only home of man?" and
resignedly reflects, "How long? Oh Lord, you bet! Wasn't it the time - the very
hour to go?... To blow this great blue, white, green planet, or to be blown from
it." Still in need of repair here on Earth, we come closer to the ultimate
question, which we needed to ask then, "Why?"
Why were we, like Icarus, attempting to fly into the heavens? Was it purely
because it was there? Or are we finding out now that we may actually be in
desperate need of moving?
The part of the world that was torn asunder by war, poverty, race and mankind
remains alive and is pulsating. Perhaps, we are just that much more aware of its
beat, as we mark, note and scribe all of its throbs today, via some of the same
technology that gave us liftoff then. While it has brought us closer together
via social media on an iPhone, Blackberry or some such techno-thingi, the speed
of light has gotten faster here, as we've abandoned our footprint there.
Just look how a tyrant's oppression on a people is Twittered around the world in
an instant (Oh, for Sammler's lens to have seen that!). Gazing back at the end
of the novel, Sammler, the Holocaust survivor who lived a misanthropic life
eyeing the pain and hardships all around him, abandons his belief in departing
Earth and affirmatively learns to value human life here.
But 40 years later, the question remains: Are we to live here forever or blast
off at some point to a distant planet when this Earth becomes uninhabitable
after we've wrecked it?
As Jews, wanderers, subjects of Exodus and the original text message beamed from
above, we should focus our lens and search for the answer still hidden back,
deep in our history, while we look out toward the future.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: WHILE 1969 further split a divided country, for one brief
shining moment, the residual light of JFK's Camelot captured our attention.
(Credit: AP)
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1057 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 19, 2009 Sunday
How to fight vigilantism
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 716 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
Two important verdicts were handed down last week by two separate courts - one
in the south and one in the north. Prima facie, both appear to have grappled
with outbreaks of vigilantism. Yet superficial similitude is misleading, hence
the two radically different rulings.
A Beersheba court exonerated rancher Shai Dromi from manslaughter charges
arising from his shooting, on January 13, 2007, at four intruders, killing one
of them. They trespassed onto his property, poisoned his guard-dog (not the
first such occurrence) and broke into the sheep-pen. Dromi feared for his life.
In Haifa, four policemen, all with promising careers in a prestigious unit, were
convicted for having plotted to attack local crime boss Michael Mor with
explosives. They too claimed to have acted in self-defense because Mor had
terrorized them and their families with impunity. After grenades were tossed
into the officers' homes, they concluded that "it was him or them."
The palpable difference between the two cases was that Dromi was judged to have
perceived himself in pressing existential danger. The cops, however, had
conspired to thwart a danger that wasn't as immediate.
What the two cases do have in common is the fact that at different ends of the
country, citizens who are otherwise upstanding members of society resorted to
violence - not in order to abet the commission of felonies, but in order to
thwart criminals. Effectively, they became vigilantes.
A VIGILANTE is one who enacts his own form of justice in response to
insufficient or inept protection by authorities. Vigilantism grows in dark,
seamy recesses where anarchy reigns. Like the Negev, where no farmer is exempt
from the reign of terror imposed by Beduin gangs.
The police do little, and rarely arrive even when summoned. Insurance companies
will have nothing to do with beleaguered farmers. Their only recourse is paying
exorbitant "protection" sums to Beduin "guards" in order to prevent them from
absconding with equipment, livestock and/or produce.
On Wednesday night, livestock was reportedly stolen from Ariel Sharon's heavily
secured farm.
The Negev has justly earned the unflattering moniker of Israel's "Wild South."
Throughout large lawless tracts - including posh Beersheba suburbs - no
entrepreneur, homeowner or driver is safe from predation.
THE CONVICTED officers weren't bad apples, but individuals charged with
safeguarding the applecart. Isn't it sad that the police were unable to offer
reasonable protection to these officers whose safety (and that of their
families) was on the line for their community's sake?
Most distressing is the fact that the law-enforcers themselves had lost faith in
the power of police and the legal system to effectively come to their aid. What
conclusions, then, are ordinary citizens to draw?
But it isn't only the police who disappoint. The judiciary is just as likely to
demonstrate indifference to defending the populace.
Last week, the parents of 15-year-old Ma'ayan Sapir - who was raped, tortured
and finally murdered near her Rehovot home in 2005 - sued the state for allowing
the extraordinarily sadistic juvenile delinquent who attacked her out on
furlough from the facility in which he was incarcerated.
From age 12, this lout had been involved in drugs, break-ins and inflicting
grievous bodily harm. Prior to his "vacation," he assaulted a fellow inmate,
carving curses on his victim's body.
The police and welfare authorities demanded imprisonment in an adult
penitentiary; the court opted for leniency and sent him to a juvenile detention
facility, whose inmates are allowed furloughs. His fateful chance encounter with
Ma'ayan occurred on his second furlough.
THE CRISIS of confidence that results when citizens lose faith in their criminal
justice system engenders widespread insecurity both inside the system and out.
The citizenry watches helplessly as crime families brazenly do what they please,
subverting or terminating witnesses and even intimidating officers. Unavoidably,
law enforcement's malfunction is bound to erode the established value system -
as evinced in the tragedy of the four officers and Shai Dromi's ordeal.
This newspaper by no means justifies vigilantism. In fact, we emphatically and
unequivocally oppose it. What we expect is law enforcement - on all levels.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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1058 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 19, 2009 Sunday
'The Jews' get-away- with-genocide-free-card'
BYLINE: NOAM SCHIMMEL
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1505 words
HIGHLIGHT: On a recent visit here, Naomi Klein invoked pejorative stereotypes
about Jews in general - and Jewish students in particular. The writer served as
an intern with the Office of the Prosecutor at the UN International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda and advocates for the human rights of genocide survivors,
indigenous peoples, street children and the economically disadvantaged in the
developing world.
Recent statements Naomi Klein made in public and to the media on her visit to
Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories raise a number of concerns as
to Klein's perception and depiction of Jews, Israel and the Jewish students at
the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva.
How Klein reconciles racial and religious defamation and hate speech with her
purported commitment to human rights and social justice confounds me. At her
Ramallah lecture she said, "[Some Jews] even think we get one get-
away-with-genocide-free-card." This is the most perverse of aspersions on Jews,
an age-old stereotype of Jews as intrinsically evil and malicious, eager to
murder innocent people because they are bloodthirsty.
It is not just an insensitive, crass, and highly offensive statement. It is a
violent and unethical one, laced with antipathy toward Jews. The fact that Klein
prefaced it by explaining that she is a Jew does nothing to minimize the
pathology it manifests.
The facile distinction between Israel's citizens and the State of Israel that
Klein makes when advocating a boycott of Israeli institutions, government and
businesses is neither logical nor practical. Boycotting the State of Israel is
an attack on its citizens, collectively. The state is constituted by its
citizens, and for someone who argues, rightly, against collective punishment,
the bizarre notion that the collective punishment of Israelis is ethical is
hypocritical.
One can and should advocate for the rights of Palestinians, as Klein does. But
when one's advocacy for the rights of one people comes at the expense of one's
capacity to empathize and show solidarity with others who also suffer and
experience injustice - including many Israelis - then one compromises both one's
morality and one's humanity.
HUMAN RIGHTS are universal. If Klein is genuinely committed to that principle
and to the principle of equality, she would, along with her fierce criticisms of
Israel, issue vigorous criticisms of Hamas's policies of murdering innocent
Israelis and deliberately targeting civilians in violation of international
human rights law.
Whatever the power dynamics and asymmetries in this conflict - and Klein reduces
them to David and Goliath terms that obscure a more complex reality and context
- the weak have no right to murder the innocent by virtue of their relative
powerlessness.
Klein has stated that boycotts are a tactic and not a dogma. Perhaps in an ideal
world they can be characterized this way, but in the real world they are very
much both a tactic and a dogma.
Boycotts generate powerful pejorative emotions; they often rely on stereotypes
and demonizations of an entire society and human community. In this way, they
can lay the groundwork for dehumanization. Often these stereotypes are implicit
and not a formal part of boycott campaigns; nevertheless, they form a
significant component of them and become a part of popular perception which
motivates the boycotting action.
Many of the campaigns to boycott Israel have become projects of hatred and
ideological orthodoxy, self- righteousness and refusal to engage in dialogue
beyond a tiny circle of individuals who agree with the commitments and tactics
of the boycotters. Until those demanding boycotts address this tendency, their
calls will be stained by the cascade of violent emotions that it has unleashed
and legitimized.
Klein claims that "the decision isn't to boycott Israel but rather to oppose
official relationships with Israeli institutions." This distinction is itself
problematic and largely untenable. Boycotting is a very blunt tool and you do
not bring justice with a bludgeon.
By boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions one inevitably boycotts
Israelis as individuals and Israel as a whole.
Klein should be more honest about this. She is hedging because she knows that
she cannot reconcile her justified aversion to boycott Israelis as a people with
her commitment to boycotting for the sake of pressuring Israel to alleviate the
suffering of the Palestinians and lay the groundwork for a just solution to the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
COMMENTING ON the UN Durban Review Conference held in Geneva in April, Klein
says that she was disturbed by "the Jewish students' lack of respect for the
representatives from Africa and Asia who came to speak about issues like
compensation for slavery and the rise of racism around the world." Again, Klein
speaks in broad pejorative stereotypes about Jews, only this time, Jewish
students in particular.
As a Jewish student who attended the conference, I reject this reductive
characterization of a diverse group of more than 200 students from countries
around the globe. Many of the Jewish students I spoke to attended the conference
in large part out of their interest in and concern for human rights and social
justice. To caricature them and demean them as being unconcerned with these
issues is unfair and inaccurate.
The same Jewish students that Klein speaks of so disparagingly were engaged in
advocacy for the rights of Rwandan genocide survivors, for the victims of
genocide and mass atrocity in Sudan, for women and religious and ethnic
minorities in Iran and around the world, for gays and lesbians, for indigenous
peoples and for the poor and the marginalized in the developing world. Africa,
Asia and Latin America were definitely concerns for some of these students and
priorities for some as well. We met with ambassadors, attended plenary sessions,
advocated on these issues, among others, and educated ourselves about them.
In an interview with Haaretz, Klein described the Jewish students who protested
against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the conference as
"truly awful" - in the same breath as she described Ahmadinejad as "truly
awful." Is there really a moral equivalency between Jewish student protesters
protesting his speech with clown outfits, and his anti-Semitic tirades and calls
to destroy Israel? When the Jewish students wore clown outfits and plastic noses
to say that Durban is a joke, they were protesting the masquerade nature at the
heart of the Durban conference, including but not exclusively Ahmadinejad's
speech and the anti-Semitic statements of the Iranian delegation. They were not
mocking the rights and claims of African and Asian representatives seeking
redress for historical injustices
Nations that engage in the most egregious human rights violations, including
Iran, used the conference as an opportunity to deflect responsibility for their
human rights violations and to project it onto Israel and the West, rather than
to confront all human rights violations alike, including their own.
I did not wear a clown outfit or a red nose, but I am grateful to the student
activists who did because without their protests the moral hypocrisy at the
heart of the conference would not have been exposed.
KLEIN SEEMS to believe that the statements released at the Durban conference
actually made a tangible difference for individuals and communities suffering
from human rights violations.
They did not.
Durban, like much of the UN apparatus, was a self- congratulatory and
self-serving exercise in the banality of language; it was a rhetorical echo
chamber. There was no substantive budget provided to address human rights
violations and no meaningful mechanism of accountability for human rights
violators.
Conferences like Durban do more harm than good to the world's poor and
vulnerable: They salve the consciences of the powerful and the wealthy by
allowing them to use words to create the illusion of doing something about
inequality and injustice. However, meaningful action was not an outcome of that
conference nor will it be. The conference was designed to preclude that.
Rwandan genocide survivors implored delegates to do something to help Rwandan
women who survived the genocide and are dying of HIV, as did indigenous peoples
suffering from stigmatization and marginalization, Baha'is in Iran who are
persecuted by the dictatorial theocratic regime, and Dalits in India suffering
from persecution and discrimination.
They wanted action and justice. Instead, they got words and platitudes.
It is time that Klein brings greater analytical integrity to her writing and
advocacy, greater humility, self-criticism and self-reflection to her
observations and conclusions about complex social and economic issues, and
greater nuance to her arguments.
Naomi Klein is brilliant, perceptive and extremely analytical and insightful in
many of her writings. She is also, sometimes, wrong.
Were she to temper her stridency and the prejudices that sustain it she would
find herself a more successful advocate for justice and peace. She would find
Israelis and human rights activists better able to engage her arguments and
concerns, knowing that they stem not from ideological dogmatism and hostility to
the human rights and well-being of Israelis, but out of concern for the rights
and well- being of Palestinians and Israelis alike and the universality of human
rights.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: 2 photos: A JEWISH STUDENT protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech in
Durban is hustled away by security guards. Naomi Klein derided the demonstrators
for 'lack of respect for the representatives from Africa and Asia.' (Credit: AP.
Bloomberg)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved
1059 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 19, 2009 Sunday
Letters
BYLINE: Yehudit Collins, M. Hagenauer, Rabbi Eliezer Parkoff, Derek Pentol,
Ricky Goldberg, Marcella Wachtel, Ron Spinner, James Adler, Jerusalem Post staff
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1154 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Who's a rabbi?
Sir, - It seems time to change the debate from "Who's a Jew?" to "Who's a
rabbi?"
Anyone can set himself up as a rabbi if he or she can command a following. As
"rabbi" means teacher, I suppose anyone can claim the title even if what they
teach is relevant only to the lunatic fringes at both extremes of Judaism.
In days of yore, rabbis would organize fast days when the Jewish people were in
danger; now we have rabbis fasting for the Palestinians.
At the other extreme, we have rabbis participating in a rabble to protest the
arrest of a mother accused of child abuse ("Workers evacuated as haredim stone
J'lem welfare office," Online Edition, July 16), and rabbis organizing violent
Sabbath demonstrations to protest what they deem Sabbath desecration.
So from the rabbis who don't keep kosher, drive on Shabbat and perform same-sex
marriages to the rabbis who do not believe in Israel's right to exist and
indulge in immoral or even illegal pursuits - but recite the correct blessing
before doing so - where are the real rabbis, the rabbis prepared to teach
morality, and that strange, archaic word that has gone out of use - goodness?
Will the real rabbis please stand up!
YEHUDIT COLLINS
Jerusalem
Now that's a rabbi!
Sir, - Full marks for "Amar-led panel upholds conversion canceled by Haifa
Rabbinic Court" (July 16). That's how authentic Orthodox Jewish law works, with
empathy and moderation - away from campaigning with semi- Torah, unbalanced
standards and over-exaggerated principles for political gain.
M. HAGENAUER
Jerusalem
Group libel
Sir, - In response to your ongoing onslaught against the haredi community: There
is a small group of people called Natorei Karta living mainly in Mea She'arim
and a section of Beit Shemesh. I know them personally - they are extremists and
unwilling to listen to reason. They are extremely anti-Zionist and, helped by
numerous undisciplined children, practice violence to demonstrate a point.
Ninety-nine percent of haredim distance themselves from this fringe group and
have nothing to do with them.
I am insulted by the use of "haredi" to refer to these extremists. This is group
libel, totally unacceptable from a paper with a reputation as fine as yours.
If 20 Hebrew University students burned the Israeli flag, would you dump all
university students into the same heap?
RABBI ELIEZER PARKOFF
Jerusalem
My country, wrong or wrong
Sir, - Is Larry Derfner a real person, or a "virtual" writer dreamed up by your
staff to play the bad cop for all the other good cops featuring in your
newspaper?
Derfner unfailingly descends to denigrating Israel and Israelis at every
possible opportunity, the most recent being his blind acceptance of the report
issued by Breaking the Silence containing the tendentious and uninvestigated
complaints of 26 anonymous soldiers ("Our sons are lying again," July 16).
DEREK PENTOL
Tel Aviv
Sir, - Larry Derfner is spot-on in observing that we - large portions of the
Israeli public, officialdom, media and, of course, the IDF - have a knee-jerk
reaction of immediate disbelief and disparagement toward anything critical of
our conduct in war. This is carried to the absurd, as the writer points out,
when we so vehemently doubt "our own sons," with the pathetic justification that
they are either "left-wing" or manipulated by groups with such an "agenda."
Perhaps it should not be expected from the IDF to be forthcoming, since like
many fighting armies of past and present, it tends to automatically whitewash
"dirty" deeds to protect itself and brush off controversy.
But it's about time this self-righteousness had more than an occasional dent put
in it.
Anyone who understands what it's like to be a soldier testifying against his
comrades should realize how difficult it is to wish to be exposed. This is no
excuse for branding these dedicated combat troops liars.
And why should they lie? Why should they want to tarnish their friends' name?
Because they're "left-wing"? Have all the naysayers got a serious answer to
that?
Sorrowfully, we will deny our country's and army's wrongdoing because it
punctures a painful hole in our national pride and sullies our sons' name - even
though it is precisely our sons whom we harm by so doing.
RICKY GOLDBERG
Haifa
Sir, - Lying by omission is also lying. Although Derfner's article begins:
"First, we saw the destruction of Gaza," he is actually not starting with what
came first.
There were good and urgent reasons to destroy as much of Gaza as possible in
order to prevent more rockets flying at us and the destruction of Israeli towns
and property. This is a war, and in war innocent people get hurt along with the
not-so-innocent.
For a while it looked as though leaving Gaza would be a good start toward peace.
Misjudging our enemies' motivation - believing their lies about wanting peace -
turned that move into a bitter disappointment.
The two reasons given by the battalion commander for destroying abandoned homes
- to make sure they didn't pose a threat to us and ensure Hamas would have no
place to hide - are splendid reasons, protecting the men we sent in to do the
job and making it harder for those who would attack us.
Derfner tars all but those who agree with him with the same brush: All are
lying. I wonder if he thinks the people of Sderot concocted a scenario of steady
rocket fire just to give the IDF an excuse to march into Gaza?
Someone so concerned with lying should take the time to investigate the lies of
Jenin.
MARCELLA WACHTEL
Jerusalem
I'm volunteering
Sir, - Michael Freund's idea to build a museum to victims of terror is
interesting. Why not start with a virtual museum on the Internet? That way more
people can access it, and it can go up much faster. The bricks-and- mortar
version can come later.
I am willing to donate my Internet marketing skills to the project. Any content
writers, project managers or web developers want to join in? ("Build a museum of
Arab terror," July 16.)
RON SPINNER
Hoshaya
Bleak and hopeful
Sir, - "Gone but not forgotten" (July 15) was bleak and hopeful and
heartbreaking all at the same time. It also reaffirmed why I am a Zionist,
though a very liberal one. It reminded me of some of my other favorite Zionist
voices, like Amos Oz (in his A Tale of Love and Darkness) and Daniel Gordis (in
his If a Country Can Make You Cry - Dispatches from an Anxious State).
We may differ in our politics, but the piece conveyed a sense of the tragedy of
the Jewish people - and of its unbreakable fortitude; and also of the individual
human being carrying on, tenaciously.
Those old slings and arrows of (all too often outrageous) fortune affect us all,
but we work through our losses because, as Judy Montagu pointed out, we simply
have no choice.
JAMES ADLER
Cambridge, Massachusetts
CLARIFICATION
The op-ed articles by Yossi Alpher and Ghassan Khatib that ran on page 15 of our
July 15 edition originally appeared in www.bitterlemons.org and were reprinted
by permission.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 19, 2009 Sunday
'We are all Shai Dromi'
BYLINE: Liat Collins
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1083 words
HIGHLIGHT: Life on a Negev farm is not just hard.It can be frightening. First
published in the International Edition of July 17, 2009. MY WORD
When Myra Dromi left Jerusalem a few years ago to live with her son on his Negev
ranch near the Beersheba suburb of Meitar, it was not to live out a dream. Which
is fortunate. Because the reality was like the desert itself, beautiful but
harsh at the same time.
I spoke to Myra briefly in January 2007 when her son Shai was arrested for
shooting a group of four Beduin intruders who broke into his farm in the middle
of the night - killing one of them, Khaled el-Atrash, and wounding another.
At that point, she didn't really want to talk to me, neither as a journalist nor
as a former colleague.
Last week she was more forthcoming, the relief evident in her voice which seemed
to break up not only due to the poor reception on her mobile phone in her
isolated home.
"I felt the court understood quite well that he acted out of a feeling of being
threatened and they had to find a way to express that," she told me a few hours
after Shai had been acquitted of manslaughter on July 15 (although he was found
guilty of possessing a weapon without a valid license, a rifle given to him by
his late father).
WHEN SHE left Jerusalem for the South it was not out of some kind of idealism or
Zionism.
"I did my Zionism 50 or 60 years ago," says Myra, 76, who made aliya from the US
in 1950 and lived on a kibbutz and in Beersheba. "Although for my son that was
probably part of his decision. My son built up the ranch true to a vision. For
him, I think, it was part of his love of the Land."
Another son, Amir, has an organic farm in Judea and is embroiled in a struggle
with the Israel Lands Administration which leased him the land.
Does Myra regret her decision to leave the capital? "Definitely not. I still
love it here... It's still pastoral. We live simply. We don't have electricity
yet although I think we're going to get it soon."
For 20 years, Shai Dromi hasn't been allowed to link up to the national grid,
says his mother, which certainly makes life more what she frequently calls
"challenging."
"I wasn't surprised [with what I found here] because I knew what I was coming
to. In a way, I hoped my presence would help deter the intruders," she says,
speaking in the way that mothers have when they wish they could make everything
all right for their children.
"I wouldn't say I was surprised but I was challenged. And the intensification of
the robberies and attempted robberies brought with it a tension I hadn't
expected," admits Myra.
What the court heard, and apparently accepted, was that the tension - after the
constant thefts and even having has his first home burned down - mounted until
it turned into fear.
"At night you hear a noise and wonder if it's the sound of a branch rubbing
against something or a sheep rubbing against something or someone trying to get
through the fence....
"After seeing seven dogs dying - and dying in agony - I didn't have any
illusions. It's not a person, but seeing a dog die..."
I DON'T know whether her voice has faded because of the poor reception or
whether something has distracted her. Perhaps I'm the one whose attention has
wandered, drawn to the memory of the death of Myra's daughter a few years before
she left Jerusalem.
"It's not great grazing land or farmland but my son has done his best [since he
started the farm in 1986]. There's an atmosphere here that some people love and
I'm one of them," she says. "There are good things as well as problems that come
with living off the beaten track. But I have become friends with my son,
appreciate the quiet and the nice neighbors and the people and volunteers who
pass through."
The problem, of course, is not the volunteers who pass through but the
trespassers and the Beduin who have entered again and again, stealing whole
flocks of sheep - ruining Shai Dromi's livelihood as well as his dream and very
nearly his life.
"We live right on the Green Line and can see the infiltrators coming through,
avoiding patrols. The vast majority are simply looking for work but one never
knows..," says Myra.
ONE OF the unexpected results of her son's case was the passage of what is known
as the Shai Dromi Law, an amendment to the Penal Law aimed at giving property
owners more freedom to use lethal force against people who break into their
homes, businesses or farms. Although the decision caused a public uproar, with
many Arab MKs in particular claiming it was a racist act giving Jewish farmers
license to kill, at the same time bumper-stickers appeared on cars nationwide
bearing the phrase "We are all Shai Dromi." It turns out it wasn't just farmers
who have been feeling threatened but many homedwellers in rural areas who also
suffer from burglaries and fear.
Even after Dromi's acquittal last week, Arab MKs launched a blistering attack on
the decision, apparently oblivious to the way that, in effect, they were
besmirching the sector they claim to represent. If the decision is "racist" for
"targeting the Beduin" as their responses had it, they are basically saying that
the Beduin are guilty. Perhaps they could have, more honorably, called on their
public to distance themselves from such crimes, which Jewish farmers say is an
accepted way of life. Even the man that Dromi killed had previously served four
years in jail for agricultural theft. And, of course, there are also Jewish
rustlers and thieves, although the police say in far fewer numbers.
Among those who welcomed the court's decision was Haim Dayan of the
Cattlebreeders' Association, who once asked me, as if starting a bad joke: "How
many calves can you get in a pick-up truck?" The answer, if I recall correctly,
was 14, because the cattle thieves take out the seats and don't care about the
animal suffering caused by stuffing the creatures in. And it's not just cattle
that are stolen: tractors, irrigation computers, pesticide, generators and other
equipment also frequently disappear from farms in the North and South.
While I'm naturally pleased for Myra, as gentle a soul as they come, and for the
other farmers struggling to live a dream against the odds, it's clear the Shai
Dromi Law has its drawbacks. A week ago, two IDF officers shot at the newspaper
delivery guys outside their home, claiming they thought they were burglars.
As usual, prevention would be better with more law enforcement, even in isolated
areas, and a cultural shift in which theft was not accepted and fear did not
rule our lives.
"It's been a long and stressful morning," Myra tells me. "I'm going to sleep."
This time, perhaps, she can sleep peacefully.
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GRAPHIC: Photo: SHAI DROMI, who unexpectedly became a cause rather than a simple
farmer. (Credit: Jonathan Bloom)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: Prof. emeritus Monty Penkower
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 353 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Setting the record straight
Luz Ofek's account of a hotel weekend ("A spirited encounter," July 10) requires
correction. A tour guide talked about his mother's love for an Irgun soldier,
Meir Feinstein, "who tragically was murdered by his own countrymen while
incarcerated in a British prison." This statement falsifies historical fact.
On April 3, 1947, the British mandatory government's Jerusalem Military Court
sentenced Feinstein to be hanged for taking part in blowing up the Jerusalem
railway station six months earlier. LEHI member Moshe Barazani had received the
same sentence on March 17 for carrying a hand grenade in Jerusalem a week
before. At 11:40 p.m. on April 21, prior to their scheduled execution the
following morning, the two men committed suicide in Jerusalem's Central Prison
by detonating two hand grenades placed between their chests. They had requested
the Irgun to smuggle in the grenades in order to kill themselves and their
executioners on the way to the gallows but chose their ultimate fate so as not
to endanger the life of a rabbi who had insisted on accompanying them at dawn.
Their deaths took place five days after the British had executed four Irgun
members on the gallows of Acre Prison. Three more followed in July.
Official acknowledgment of the dissident right-wing military organizations came
slowly after the Jewish state's rebirth. In 1962, two streets in Jerusalem were
named for Feinstein and Barazani. In 1978, former members of the Hagana, Irgun,
and LEHI marched together for the first time in Israel's Independence Day
parade. In 2006, a monument to the Hagana, Irgun and LEHI fighters was dedicated
in Ramat Gan. In 2008, representatives of all the Yishuv's underground military
movements took part in a ceremony at the Defense Ministry's headquarters in Tel
Aviv: "To our sorrow," declared defense minister Ehud Barak, "in the 60-
year-old State of Israel, whose revival and existence you defended with your
self-sacrifice, the values you have instilled can no longer be taken for
granted." Lessons have yet to be fully learned.
Prof. emeritus Monty Penkower , Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Mailbag
BYLINE: Edith Ognall, Dr. Colin L. Leci
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 31
LENGTH: 395 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
For the soul of the country
Re: Can I live in a haredi neighborhood?
(Letters to the editor, July 10)
Dear editor,
Having just read the letter from Eli Minoff of Safed I would like to make a
brief comment. It is not the haredim who are "slowly destroying the soul of our
country" but the secular who are trying, and I hope unsuccessfully, to turn our
holy capital into a city where there is no Shabbat and no observance of our
Halacha. For those who wish such a life, perhaps Tel Aviv would be the answer,
but please leave Yerushalayim as it was meant to be, where we can go and visit
our holy sites and walk on Shabbat in the beautiful silence that comes one day
in the week. We were never meant to be like other people, which is why we have
survived everything that has been thrown at us. None of the aforementioned
condones in any way the violent behavior of some haredim.
Edith Ognall,
Netanya
Something rotten in Yad Binyamin
Dear editor,
At an exposure limit of 10 parts per million hydrogen sulfide in the air for a
constant period of 10 minutes, the olfactory nerves become paralyzed, the odor
is no longer recognizable, resulting in asphyxia and subsequent death. Lower
limits of hydrogen sulfide for longer periods have the same effect.
It was therefore appalling to learn (The Jerusalem Post, July 10 - Something
rotten, literally, in the town of Yad Binyamin) that the government re-housed
120 refugee families from Gush Katif adjacent to a malfunctioning sewage works
designed for a maximum of 40,000 residents' waste, but attempting to treat waste
from 70,000 that emits this toxic gas.
These sort of conditions are what one would expect of third-world countries with
poor scientific knowledge and meager resources - not one which claims it has one
of the greatest pools of talent in the world. To their shame it would appear
that nobody in local government or central government is prepared to take
responsibility; not even the Environment Ministry or the vocal green
environmental lobby is prepared to raise this issue on a national scale. How
long will this Yiheyeh beseder (it will be okay) approach continue to the
detriment of the country? It is time to pay attention to our environmental
infrastructure and stop shifting the target goals as has been done with the
water supply, otherwise it will result in rapid internal hemorrhaging.
Dr. Colin L. Leci,, Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: Yehoshua Paul, JJ Gross, Rabbi Raymond Apple, Simcha Friedman
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 605 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Woman power is real
Sir, - Naomi Chazan attempts to instill the belief that women's rights are
constantly under attack ("The gender test," July 10). The only problem is that
none of the items on her list of "syndromes" is an attack on women's rights.
Segregation on buses to haredi neighborhoods is something both genders from that
sector want, and affects only that sector. Strengthening the Chief Rabbinate's
power affects more groups than just women, and a few remarks made by a rabbi at
a conference expressing his own personal views do not constitute an active
campaign against women serving in the IDF.
Today women have no problem becoming prime ministers, ministers, MKs, Supreme
Court heads or university professors, and there is no position in this country
in which a woman cannot be employed. The richest person in Israel is a woman,
and women today get a fair hearing in any sexual harassment suit. Women can be
represented by women at the Chief Rabbinate; public figures are brought down in
Israel by women; and women automatically receive custody of young children in a
divorce.
Perhaps it is time to review whether the Authority for The Advancement of the
Status of Women is still a viable office.
YEHOSHUA PAUL
Ginot Shomron
Impressed? Not really
Sir, - Jonathan Rosenblum expects us to be impressed because 250 haredim are, in
his own words, self-servingly enlisted in the IDF. What about the other 55,000
young haredim of enlistment age who are doing nothing?
The real crime is not what the haredim perpetrate against the State of Israel.
It is what they perpetrate against themselves. The belief that every male born
in a haredi neighborhood is, ipso facto, cut out for a life of Torah study is as
ridiculous as saying every child born within a mile of Lincoln Center is cut out
to be a violinist.
Hundreds of thousands of haredi men live lives of frustration and poor
self-esteem because they know they have no aptitude for learning, yet are given
no opportunity to develop the aptitudes they do have.
Scripture cautions us to "Educate each child according to his own way" (Job
11:12). The haredi world would rather force every square peg into a round hole
("A haredi rapprochement with Israel," July 10).
JJ GROSS
Riverdale, New York / Jerusalem
What 'Minhag Anglia' is
Sir, - Hyam Corney's review of Albion and Jerusalem (July 10) is headlined
"Minhag Anglia" - but the one thing it does not do is analyze that minhag.
Nobody knows where the term originated, nor do most people define it properly.
The general opinion is that it is basically a religious category connected to
prayer.
Minhag Anglia is a cultural phenomenon. Its principle, which ruled Anglo-Jewry
for many decades, is that everything English is good for Jews. Jews are not only
in England, but of England.
The first thing Jews aimed for when they arrived in Britain was anglicization,
even anglicanization. The chief rabbi was the Jewish archbishop of Canterbury.
The Singer siddur was Anglo-Jewry's Book of Common Prayer, and the United
Synagogue was its established church. Klei kodesh were clergy, hazanim were
precentors, shamashim were beadles, and gabbaim were wardens. The Jewish
Chronicle was the Jewish Times, the Board of Deputies was the Jewish House of
Commons.
In recent years, Minhag Anglia has fallen apart - but that's another story.
RABBI RAYMOND APPLE
Jerusalem
Compliments to you
Sir, - UpFront of July 10 was a classic. The graphics were appealing to the eye.
The typeface was clear, and often highlighted in color. It made reading easier,
especially for seniors. Compliments to your editor, and to your graphic artist.
SIMCHA FRIEDMAN , Betar Illit
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
'Every second offers a second chance'
BYLINE: DAVID J. FORMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 1091 words
HIGHLIGHT: Counterpoint. Almost all the songs on Miri Awad and Ahinoam Nini's
new album speak of reconciliation
Ahinoam Nini and Miri Awad joined together to represent Israel at this year's
Eurovision Song Contest. Nini, an Israeli Jew, and Awad, an Israeli Arab,
recently produced an album together. The title of the CD is There Must Be
Another Way. Of the 12 songs, some they sing together - in Hebrew, Arabic and
English - and others they sing on their own, each in her native language.
Virtually all the songs speak about empathy and identity, hope and
understanding, reconciliation and peace.
Growing up in the United States in the turbulent 1960s when the two major events
that dominated the stage were the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam,
a plethora of folk singers appeared giving voice to the struggle for freedom for
African-Americans and for an end to the war in Southeast Asia. The Soviet Jewry
movement also introduced folk music that gave expression to those Russian Jews -
refuseniks - who wanted to return to Israel, their ancestral homeland.
Pete Seeger's "We Shall Overcome," Peter, Paul and Mary's "If I Had a Hammer"
and Joan Baez's "Oh, Freedom" defined the civil rights movement; Buffalo
Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and Country Joe and the Fish's "Feel Like
I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" bespoke the anti-war movement; and Bob Dylan's "The Times
They Are A-Changin'" spoke of the seismic transformations that were sweeping
America. "Blue and White," "We and You" and "Let My People Go" fired up every
demonstration on behalf of Soviet Jews.
Songs of protest stirred people's emotions to fight for social causes and to
bring about change for a more peaceful and decent world. However, when Miri Awad
and Ahinoam Nini appeared on the stage together at the Eurovision, cynicism on
the part of much of the Israeli Arab community was expressed. The argument went:
This is pure Israeli propaganda, an attempt to indicate that harmony and
equality exist between Arabs and Jews, whereas persecution and oppression are
more accurate reflections of reality. Awad is being exploited to create a false
impression of Israeli society and has become a willing pawn to redraw the
negative image that Israel so rightfully deserves.
Is it just possible that joint artistic ventures of Arabs and Jews might
positively serve Arab interests? After all, there is an image out there that
Arabs, especially Muslims, are all terrorists, strapping suicide belts onto
their bodies or killing each other with impunity as is the case in Iraq (and
Gaza) or crashing planes into the Twin Towers. Might one consider that Awad is
helping to alter the picture of those Islamic fundamentalists who decapitated
journalist Daniel Pearl? Why must every Arab- Jewish enterprise be portrayed by
a significant majority within the Arab community as propaganda? One would think
- or at least, hope - that those who try to foster reconciliation would be
encouraged.
THERE IS an asymmetry that has penetrated our region when it comes to
nongovernmental organizations that promote human rights, civil liberties and
coexistence. While there are manifold groups operating in Israel, each harshly
critical of government policy, there is a paucity of similar organizations
within the Arab world. There are those human rights groups within the
Palestinian Authority that criticize Israel, but few that are self-critical. The
one or two that operate, do so for fear of their leaders' lives, as is the case
within every Arab state.
But what is truly tragic is that Arab human rights NGOs are always willing to
join with Israeli human rights NGOs to uncover civil liberties abuses that
Israelis commit, but are rarely willing to partner with the Miri Awads of the
Arab world who try to foster understanding between Arabs and Jews.
Could it be that the Arab world believes that Awad is not representative of its
sentiments because she is a Christian? Indeed, Christian Arabs are caught
between a rock and a hard place. They have to reconcile their theology with
their nationalism. Like those Orthodox Jews who believe that this land was
divinely promised to the Jews, so do those religious Christian Arabs who adhere
to the Judeo-Christian tradition. As one can imagine, this theological worldview
does not resonate positively with their Muslim brethren who have clothed a
chauvinistic theology in a national ego, justifying extreme behavior in the name
of God. As a result, Christians in the West Bank have been reduced to an
insignificant minority, even in once predominant Christian towns like Bethlehem,
the cradle of Christianity's birth.
NO ONE can deny that the Arab minority in Israel does not enjoy the same rights
as the Jewish majority. Prejudice against Arabs is all too prominent among Jews.
For certain, more than 40 years of occupation has wreaked havoc upon the
Palestinians. And yet, there are many bright spots of cooperative enterprises
between Arabs and Jews. There are the bilingual schools, the cooperative moshav
of Neveh Shalom, the Beit Hagefen community center, Givat Haviva seminar center,
the Center for Israeli Jewish-Arab Economic Development - to name but a few of
the more than 200 NGOs working in the field of coexistence and equality.
Instead of deriding Miri Awad and Ahinoam Nini's joint efforts to bring some
hope to the Middle East, the Arab community should be encouraging their
friendship and their attempt to turn that friendship, through the artistic
skills with which they are both blessed, into a force for good.
So, hear the words that Nini and Awad sing: "And, when I cry, I cry for both of
us. My pain has no name. And, when I cry, I cry to the merciless sky and say,
'There must be another way.'" Listen to their plaintive cry: "Where can we go
from here? Sister, it's been one long night. What's to come? I fear. Give me
something to restore my faith in the light. Tell me that we're here to stay, and
that we can set things right." Absorb their chilling call: "You're broken when
your heart's not open... There's no point in placing the blame. And you should
know I suffer the same..."
Neither Arab nor Jew has a monopoly on pain and suffering. Sadly, there has been
too much of each emotion that has scarred our souls. And yet, there is no future
in despair. Belittling two people from different backgrounds and experiences -
expressing their heartfelt dream through song that "there must be another way" -
is self-defeating. Simply, Awad and Nini would have us hopefully acknowledge
that while "the clock's still ticking in a frantic trance, and we are locked
together in a tragic dance, remember that every second offers a second chance."
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GRAPHIC: Photo: Ahinoam Nini and Miri Awad. The Arab community should not deride
their joint efforts to bring some hope to the Middle East. (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Maccabiah's muscle Jews
BYLINE: GIL TROY
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1093 words
HIGHLIGHT: Center Field. The games make Zionism fun, reminding us that we are
not just a religion but a people. The writer is professor of history at McGill
University. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and
the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best
Presidents. He splits his time between Jerusalem and Montreal.
Pop quiz: When is the last time anyone you know used the words "Zionism" and
"fun" in the same sentence? Unfortunately, too many people today approach
Zionism, which was supposed to solve "the Jewish problem" in Europe, as the big
Jewish problem today. This week Israel is hosting the 18th Maccabiah, the
world's-third largest sporting event - after the Olympics and the World
University Games. As 5,300 Jewish athletes from 65 countries join 2,000 Israeli
athletes, competing in dozens of sports, from cycling to swimming, from soccer
to squash, they will be making Zionism fun, as it should be.
The Maccabiah, which now meets every four years, traces its origins to 1912.
That year's Stockholm Olympics inspired 15-year-old Yosef Yekutieli to dream of
a Jewish Olympics in Israel. Twenty years later in 1932, 390 Jewish athletes
from 18 countries, including Syria and Egypt, inaugurated the First Maccabiah at
a new stadium in northern Tel Aviv, completed just before the opening
ceremonies. Under British rule, Palestine was a primitive backwater, lacking
even a competitive swimming pool. The Maccabiah took place again in 1935. The
third would be delayed 15 years until 1950, after the Holocaust's horrors, but,
happily, in a new State of Israel.
To understand the Maccabiah's meaning, we must remember the origins of the
Zionist movement in the late 1890s and early 1900s. One of Theodor Herzl's
colleagues, the essayist and physician Dr. Max Nordau, called for a renewed
"Muskeljudentum," a "Jewry of muscles." Millennia of exile and oppression had
made Jews the world's weaklings. Jews as a people were persecuted. Individual
Jews, Nordau mourned, were "haggard and unable to defend ourselves in the narrow
alleyways of the ghetto."
Nordau proclaimed: "We will develop wide chests, strong arms and legs, a brave
look. We will be warriors. But our recovery to health is not only through the
body, but also in the spirit, for as Hebrews will attain more achievements in
sport, so will our self-confidence improve. Hebrew sports clubs go forward and
bloom." These sports clubs sprouted into the Maccabiah movement.
IN REBUILDING the Jewish body and spirit, Nordau and other early Zionists
reclaimed Jewish history. For too long, rabbis had emphasized the scholars of
the past and ignored the warriors. Nordau helped revive Hanukka, making this
minor festival of lights into a highlight of the Jewish year. The heroes, of
course, were the Maccabees, the rebelling warriors from the second century BCE
who hit the Greeks hard like hammers.
Another inspiration was Bar Kochba, the Jewish warrior who fought valiantly
against the Romans, from 132 to 136 CE, 300 years after the Maccabees redeemed
the Temple. Bar Kochba's partnership with the failed revolt's other great hero,
Rabbi Akiva, illustrated the Zionist message that Jews should not have to choose
between the body and the mind, between physical and spiritual power. Yosef
Yekutieli scheduled the first Maccabiah for 1932, the Bar Kochba revolt's
1,800th anniversary.
The games' slogan and setting broadcast an even deeper Zionist message. The
games' Web site proclaims "the Maccabiah of Jewish nationhood!" Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu told the athletes at the majestic opening ceremonies Monday
night: "You represent 65 different countries, but above all, you represent one
united nation, Am Yisrael, the nation of Israel" - meaning the Jewish people.
The Maccabiah Games, assembling thousands of Jews from all over the world,
remind us that we are a people, a nation, not just a religion. Zionism is the
movement of Jewish national liberation, of Jewish nationalism. As believing and
nonbelieving Jews compete, a common theology does not unite them necessarily.
Their solidarity stems from a sense of peoplehood, a sense of belonging to the
Jewish nation, shaped by a common past, enjoying common ties in the present and
sharing a common future, no matter where they live.
This experience the athletes share in Israel will provide an essential glue that
will bond them. The Maccabiah Games could have followed the Olympic analogy,
wandering from city to city. But the logic of the Maccabiah, the logic of
Zionism, makes Israel, the center of the Jewish people, the only appropriate
site. The games are to repudiate the phenomenon of the "wandering Jew" as much
as the stereotype of the browbeaten Jew. And that is why the most appropriate
message in greeting the participants to the 18th Maccabiah - as with all Jewish
visitors to Israel - is "welcome home."
The opening ceremonies' pageantry illustrated that idea vividly. Amid a rainbow
of flags from six continents, in a sea of colorfully-clad and excited Jewish
athletes, the blue-and-white of Israel, the one sovereign Jewish state,
dominated. This brought alive the cultural Zionist Ahad Ha'am's classic
metaphor, that the Jewish people are a wheel, with Israel at the center
connecting to all Diaspora communities via various spokes.
TRAGICALLY, THE physicality most associated with Israel today is the blood of
the warrior, not the sweat of the athlete. The first national Jewish army
established since Bar Kochba has worked hard to establish the state and defend
it. But reducing the Zionist revolution to a process of producing soldiers
instead of students is a distortion. The return to the land entailed working
with our hands as well as our minds, changing our body images along with our
self-images and national image.
Essential to that transformation was stopping to view Jewish history and Jewish
life as a continuous tragedy. Zionism sought to return Jews to history, to make
Jews normal. That return included bringing fun back into Jewish life. Fun is not
always frivolous, just like sports - especially at the Maccabiah Games'
competitive level - is not always fun. But as the joyous opening ceremonies on
July 13 indicated, the smiles on the faces of thousands of athletes and
spectators will be genuine, historic and Zionist.
And perhaps, next time Zionism arises in conversation, the topic will not just
elicit the usual furrowed brows and hunched shoulders of the pro-Israel crowd's
worrying warriors - or the disproportionate disdain of the politically correct.
For the Zionist revolution to be complete, for us to fulfill the spirit of the
Maccabiah Games, our muscular Jews should be happy Jews. We all should be
delighted that we live in this period of history, when we can gather from all
over the world in peace and friendship to celebrate Israel, to celebrate sport,
to celebrate Jewish nationhood and to celebrate Zionism.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: THE AMERICAN DELEGATION at the opening ceremony of the Maccabiah
Games. (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Self-exiled by guilt
BYLINE: SARAH HONIG
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 1165 words
HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack. Fatah's cofounder reminisced at length about his Safed
origins and haphazardly let the truth slip out
Those little neglected news stories that rarely make front-page headlines and
never receive airtime are often the most telling of all. It's through them that
deliberately suppressed fundamental truths occasionally surface. It's there that
big lies are sometimes, albeit inadvertently, exposed.
Scant attention was paid last week to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas's revelations on Al- Palestinia TV. Abbas talked about his youth in Safed,
from whence he routinely claims his family was forcibly driven out by Israeli
troops in 1948. Abbas revels in his supposed refugee status. It's his
stock-in-trade on the Arab scene and the international arena. The pitiable pose
of an aggrieved victim confers ostensible moral authority upon his cause.
This pose, moreover, becomes a basic Arab tenet - the crucial claim for
justifying terror against Israel and for refusing to relinquish the so-called
"right of return" by refugees to what are described as homes robbed from them by
violent interloping Jewish conquistadores. Biased world opinion willingly and
gladly falls for the Palestinian freedom-fighter fable.
But foolhardy carelessness - or trust that nobody listens to intra-Arab
discourse - occasionally pulls off the painstakingly fabricated mask. That's
what happened to Abbas (a.k.a. Abu-Mazen) on July 6. Fatah's cofounder
reminisced at length about his Safed origins and haphazardly let the truth slip
out.
"Until the nakba" (calamity in Arabic - the loaded synonym for Israeli
independence), he recounted, his family "was well-off in Safed." When Abbas was
13, "we left on foot at night to the Jordan River... Eventually we settled in
Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a
year, when the money ran out, we began to work.
"People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist
terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from
Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what
happened during the 1929 uprising. This was in the memory of our families and
parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the
whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and
our belongings."
SO HERE it is from the mouth of the PA's head honcho himself. He and no other
verifies that nobody expelled Safed's Arabs. Their exile was voluntary,
propelled by their extreme consciousness of guilt and expectation that Jews
would be ruled by the same blood-feud conventions that prevail in Arab culture.
Unrealistically they anticipated that Jews would do to them precisely what the
Arabs had done to Safed's Jews. If that was their premise, they indeed had cause
to panic.
The "uprising" Abbas alluded to was one among the serial pogroms instigated by
infamous Jerusalem mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who's still revered throughout
the Arab world. He was a Berlin-resident avid Nazi collaborator during World War
II and a wanted war criminal postwar.
In August 1929 Husseini rallied Arabs to slaughter Jews on trumped-up
allegations of Jewish takeover attempts at the Temple Mount. Sixty-seven members
of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron were hideously hacked to death. That
was the most notorious massacre, but others were perpetrated throughout the
country. In the equally ancient Jewish community of Safed, 21 were butchered no
less gruesomely (a cat was stuffed into one old woman's disemboweled abdomen). A
child and young woman, due to be married the next day, were cold-bloodedly shot
dead by Arab constables whom British mandatory officers assigned to watch over
the majority of Safed's Jews who sought safety in the police courtyard.
The British proposed that all Safed Jews be evacuated "for their own safety," as
was the case in Hebron. The offer was vehemently refused. Thereafter,
principally during the 1936-39 mufti-led rampages, the Hagana and Safed's own
IZL cells protected the town's 2,000 Jews.
Nevertheless, on the ill-fated evening of August 13, 1936 Arab marauders managed
to infiltrate and invade the modest Unger home in the old Jewish Quarter, just
as the family ate supper. They murdered the father, Alter, a 36- year-old Torah
scribe, his daughters Yaffa and Hava (nine and seven respectively) and the
six-year-old son, Avraham.
In his book Safed Annals author Natan Shor includes the following eyewitness
account from one of the first neighbors who soon chanced by: "The boys heard
groans from one of the houses. We entered and in the middle of a dark room -
furnished only by a table, a broken chair and a bookcase crammed with mostly
religious volumes - lay a man's body. His skull was bashed in. Half the head was
missing. We saw only a beard, part of a nose and the right eye... The corpse lay
in a pool of blood and brain matter... In the next room amid the dishes, lay
three little bloodied lifeless children. Two of them were still open-eyed. An
old woman, the grandmother, ran around from room to room, crazed with grief. The
mother, herself wounded (probably left for dead), went from child to child. She
didn't yell or wail. Staring intently, she repeated quietly over and over in
Yiddish: 'If it were only me instead of you.' Her hand bled profusely and an
amputated finger hung by a strip of skin."
SUCH WAS the uprising for which Abbas's kinfolk assumed they deserved just
reckoning. Ironically, Jews were alarmed by the Arab exodus, figuring it
presaged a formidable onslaught by invading Arab armies (which indeed came). In
many areas (Haifa, for instance) Jews begged and pleaded with local Arabs to
stay. But Arabs in Safed and elsewhere - heeding their leaders' exhortations to
pull out and hounded by fears arising from their own vengeful traditions (but
not Jewish ones) - did what was prudent in light of their surmise that Jews
would behave according to Arab codes.
On the eve of the April 16, 1948 British withdrawal from Safed, the mandatory
authorities turned over the town's police facilities and Mount Canaan's military
fort to the Arabs. They offered to escort all Jews out of town "for their own
safety." As in 1929, the Jews refused unequivocally, though memories of the
horrific carnage should have inspired more dread among them than among the
fleeing Abasses.
Why wasn't Abu-Mazen's pivotal testimony accorded due resonance in our press?
Why did Israel's mainstream media largely ignore Abbas's own recollections?
Perhaps most editors aren't interested in the ideological underpinnings of the
war against their own people. Preserving the myth of Israeli fault is de
rigueur, a hallmark of enlightenment.
Nothing must be allowed to dent the potent-cum- fraudulent Palestinian refugee
narrative, not even the memories of the Palestinian headliner, to say nothing of
Jewish memories. The latter are altogether dispensable. Hence Safed residents
must these days petition their own municipality not to demolish the old Unger
home but to preserve it as a commemorative historic site.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas: 'Those of us from Safed
especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened
during the 1929 uprising.' (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Tel Hai revisited: Zionist myth, Zionist reality
BYLINE: ELI KAVON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1070 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Jewish people are in need of role models to emulate, not
semi-divine humans to worship
The Zionist movement, in its brief history, has revived many Jewish heroes of
old and has given birth to many modern ones. From the ancient rebellions of the
Zealots and Bar Kochba to the military exploits of Moshe Dayan, Zionists have
always searched for legends to bolster a beleaguered movement and state in
trying times. The pantheon of heroes produced by Zionism inspired a generation
of pioneers and toughened their children in the struggle for independence in a
state of siege.
While enemies such as Iran still threaten Israel, a new generation of Israelis
has begun to question the core myths of the Zionist movement. Some Israeli
intellectuals - post-Zionists such as Tom Segev come to mind - have converted
Masada, once a legend of Jewish defiance in the face of overwhelming foes, into
a self-defeating tale of mass suicide. Critics have maligned the role of the
Yishuv during the Holocaust, reducing such heroes as Hanna Szenes into pawns of
an impotent Jewish leadership in Palestine. Yet, the one icon that has suffered
the most from attacks by polemicists against Zionism is Yosef Trumpeldor, the
hero of Tel Hai.
Jewish pioneers founded the settlement of Tel Hai in the Upper Galilee in 1918.
Arabs attacked the settlement in the Hula Valley after the French took control
of the territory of Syria following World War I. On March 1, 1920, hundreds of
armed Arabs faced a smaller group of pioneers in a five-hour battle. Six Jewish
settlers died in combat on that day - Arabs had murdered two others in previous
attacks - and the Jews decided to abandon Tel Hai.
The Arab mob mortally wounded Trumpeldor, a Russian Jew whom the Zionists
brought to Tel Hai to help organize the defense of the beleaguered settlement.
Eyewitnesses to Trumpeldor's last moments of life said that his dying words were
the now legendary, "Never mind, it is good to die for our country." Since he
supposedly uttered those Hebrew words "tov lamut b'ad artzenu," Trumpeldor has
become an icon of Zionism.
Zionists commemorated 9 Adar, the day of the attack in the Hebrew calendar, as
"Tel Hai Day." Every year on that day, communities and schools held memorials
for the pioneer heroes. Children from schools around the country - and soldiers
as well - would visit the site of the settlement and the cemetery where
Trumpeldor is buried. A statue of a roaring lion marks the graves of the fallen
settlers.
The legend of the patriotic Trumpeldor served as an inspiration to the young
State of Israel engaged in a struggle for existence with its Arab enemies. The
Russian Jew who lost his left arm after being wounded in the czar's war against
Japan in 1904 became a superhero in the eyes of both Ben-Gurion's Socialists and
Jabotinsky's Revisionists. All Zionists wanted to claim Trumpeldor as their own.
His dying words became the almost sacred credo of a modern nation.
BUT THE idealization and idolization of Trumpeldor's actions and his last words
were not bound to last. In her groundbreaking study of Zionist historiography
and memory, Recovered Roots, historian Yael Zerubavel traces the changes in
attitude toward Trumpeldor as history unfolded in Israel. After experiencing the
horrors of endless war, Israelis began to ask if indeed it was "good to die for
our country." Instead, many sabras began to question if Trumpeldor's patriotic
last words were ever said. Perhaps Trumpeldor, whose Hebrew may have not been so
fluent, merely cursed in Russian as he died.
Trumpeldor's disability also became the subject of dark humor, some of it with a
sexual undercurrent. Israelis made jokes about the statue of the lion on
Trumpeldor's grave, arguing that it was hollow, as was the whole legend of the
one-armed pioneer. Tel Hai, once central to Zionist ideology and ethos, became a
tarnished myth, the subject of endless jokes. For post-Zionist intellectuals,
Trumpeldor emerged as yet another icon of Zionism that deserved to be smashed.
Many post-Zionists discredited Tel Hai as a way to forfeit Israel's legitimacy
as a Jewish state.
Yet the time has come to revive Trumpeldor the hero and legend of Zionism,
without resorting to the type of mythmaking that should be reserved for
kindergarten children. It matters little what Trumpeldor's dying words were. It
matters little whether he extolled Israel in the last minutes of his life or
merely cursed his fate. Yosef Trumpeldor was - and is - a genuine hero of all
Jews and Zionists. He was a war hero in the Russian army, a founder of the
Jewish battalion known as the Zion Mule Corps during World War I and a
first-rate organizer of Zionist youth throughout the Pale of Settlement. His
death at Tel Hai was, indeed, an act of heroism.
If he expired cursing his fate in Russian, it only highlights the humanity of a
brave man who did not want to die. His role in the defense of Tel Hai inspired
generations of Israelis who fought for the Jewish state on the battlefield.
Perhaps the jokes about Trumpeldor's missing arm reflect a more mature
evaluation of who the man actually was. We should not portray him as a human god
in a Zionist pantheon. He was a brave man, but a human being nevertheless. The
Jewish people are in need of role models to emulate, not semi-divine humans to
worship.
Zionism is still a vital movement and ideology. The challenge Jews face in
Israel and in the Diaspora is to mold a new Zionism that is mature enough to
admit that the movement has made mistakes in the past - and in its
interpretation of the past - and move ahead with the lessons of history.
There is no doubt that the Israeli establishment's attitude toward and treatment
of Holocaust survivors, Jewish immigrants from Arab lands, Israeli Arabs and
others deserves to come under criticism. There is no doubt that while the mass
suicide of Masada reflected the bravery of the fortress's defenders against the
Romans, the mass suicide there is not an action to be emulated today. That does
not mean, however, that Zionism is merely built on myths and lies, both ancient
and modern, whether Betar or Tel Hai.
The attainment of Jewish sovereignty, the building of a Jewish army and a
parliament, the project to create the type of "new Jew" who would both stand up
for himself and revive the glory of the past, including that of the Diaspora,
these are all goals that should be praised. We do not need to look back to the
past for icons to worship. We need human role models who will continue to
inspire.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Time to revive Yosef Trumpeldor the hero of Tel Hai and legend
of Zionism - without resorting to childish mythmaking.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Gevalt!
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 742 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
An innocent and devoted mother sits in jail because Zionist authorities want to
make an example of her to intimidate God-fearing haredim struggling to preserve
the sanctity of Jerusalem. The trumped-up charge that keeps this selfless
(pregnant) lady behind bars is that for two years she starved her little boy
almost to death.
They claim she is suffering from a psychiatric disorder, Munchausen
syndrome-by-proxy, which caused her to harm her son to win attention for
herself. What nonsense! Everyone knows she is perfectly normal.
Why isn't the media reporting the truth? The child suffered from cancer and had
undergone chemotherapy. The doctors told his mother not to allow him food by
mouth - which is why the three-year-old became so emaciated, requiring multiple
hospitalizations, and ended up weighing seven kilograms. Everyone in the
Hadassah oncology department knows this to be true; they saw how she stayed with
the child from early morning until late at night.
Then one day she said something that offended some big-shot doctor, because they
were doing experiments on the child. Naturally, our community is in an uproar
over her unjust arrest...
This is a composite of the conspiracy theories circulating not just on the
streets of Mea She'arim and Ramat Beit Shemesh, where the extremist,
anti-Zionist Toldot Aharon hassidic sect - to which the troubled family adheres
- and its fanatical Naturei Karta allies hold sway, but also in other
ultra-Orthodox areas such as Jerusalem's Har Nof, where denizens lead
considerably less insular lives. There is sympathy in the wider haredi world for
the grievances of the rioters, who have vandalized traffic lights, burned
garbage dumpsters and thrown projectiles at police, city workers and passing
vehicles.
Haredi women have conducted special prayer meetings for the mother's release.
Hassidic politicos have denounced as "collective punishment" Mayor Nir Barkat's
decision to suspend municipal services in the affected areas after city social
services and sanitation workers came under attack. (Only Lithuanian haredi
rabbis have urged their followers not to participate in the rioting.)
For the record, Dr. Yair Birnbaum, deputy director of Hadassah hospital, has
confirmed that the abused child never had cancer, and was never treated with
chemotherapy. Also that since the boy's separation from his mother, he has been
gaining weight and his physical condition has improved.
THAT THE haredi world - particularly Ashkenazi hassidim - finds it enormously
difficult to grapple with child, sexual and spousal abuse comes to light when
community members turn to the state for vital medical and social services.
That's how we learned about Rabbi Elior Chen, who instructed a gullible mother
to cleanse her child of "satanic possession." And about Yisrael Walz, who shook
his son to death - that became known when the infant was brought to hospital.
Some haredim, fearing the diabolical designs of Zionist authorities, say they
now hesitate to take their children to hospital.
There are dysfunctional families among all strata of Israeli society. But the
only stratum that reacts with collective violence when abuse is exposed is the
most insular subdivision of the haredi world.
Why is such antisocial behavior tacitly countenanced by the more conventional
hassidim? Because they share values which hold that men should be gainfully
unemployed, women socialized to believe that the back of the bus is where God
wants them, and youths reared to be clueless about the outside world.
Violence - stopping archeological digs (which might unearth Jewish graves) and
protesting the opening on Shabbat of cinemas, 24/7 mini-markets, and parking
garages outside their neighborhoods - has become a default, communally
sanctioned response.
THIS impulse is emblematic of an alienation which, because it is ripping Israeli
society apart, begs to be better understood. Haredim, like Arab citizens of
Israel, want to be accepted as different, yet feel shunned.
The Kerner Commission was established to examine the causes of rioting in
America's inner cities; in Britain and France, commissions have examined Muslim
unrest. Here in Israel, the Orr Commission investigated Arab rioting.
Perhaps we need a state commission to tell us not only why a volatile minority
of hassidic sects periodically runs amok - but also how to discourage the
culture of extreme insularity that lies at the root of their self-perpetuated
estrangement.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: Fischer family, Joe Charlaff, Seymour Brodsky, Ruby Ray Karzen, Rumana
Husain
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 901 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Best of the best
Sir, - Re Allon Sinai's "Averbukh was simply the best" (Sports, July 15): We
have followed Alex Averbukh's career since he made aliya and agree that he
deserves to be at the top! We are sure he will inspire a new generation of young
athletes to do their best and represent Israel with patriotism and modesty in
sport.
FISCHER FAMILY
Michmoret
Heblish, anyone?
Sir, - Re "Yerushalayim or "Jerusalem"? (July 14): It seems as if the former is
to be deemed correct. Has Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz nothing better to
do with his time than think up absurd ideas and then waste more money on
changing road signs that will be meaningless to the English-speaking tourist and
the non-Hebrew-speaking resident?
The worst example is Caesarea being distorted to "Qaysaria": A tourist looking
for Caesarea will drive straight past the road sign. Another example is the
German Colony, which in "Heblish" is "HaMoshava HaGermanit" - a mouthful, and
totally unnecessary.
Also the practice of writing a "w" instead of a "v," as in "Petah Tikwa," is
meaningless and will just cause confusion.
Road signs in two languages are meant to be understood by speakers of either
language and spelled correctly in that language - so Jerusalem is "Jerusalem" in
English, and "Yerushalayim" in Hebrew.
JOE CHARLAFF
Mevaseret Zion
Answer me this
Sir, - Re "US rabbis call for monthly fast against Gaza blockade" (July 14): As
the former executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, I ask
Rabbi Brian Walt:
* Where was Rabbis for Human Rights in 2000-2007, while the city of Sderot was
being rocket-bombed from Gaza? Where was its help to the traumatized Israeli
children when their school was hit?
* Where was Rabbis for Human Rights in 2008, when the citizens of Ashkelon and
Beersheba saw their homes under fire and their children in shock as a result of
the bombing from Gaza?
* Where was Rabbis of Human Rights in 2008, when Ben- Gurion University had to
close for over a month due to the possibility of being struck by rockets from
Gaza? Students are still attending classes to make up for the time lost,
interrupting their family summer vacation.
* Where has Rabbis for Human Rights been during all the time Hamas has not
permitted the International Red Cross to visit soldier Gilad Schalit, kidnapped
inside Israel's borders three years ago? Is he well? Is he alive? Why isn't
Rabbis for Human Rights, such a good friend of our Palestinian neighbors, doing
anything about it?
If Rabbi Brian Walt really wants to "correct" Israeli policies, maybe he should
make aliya and do his thing here, not from 6,000 miles away. Then he would know
there is no "blockade of Gaza" but almost 50 trucks full of humanitarian
supplies (food, medicine, etc.) sent into Gaza by Israel every day.
As for those boats trying to sail to Gaza and stopped by Israel's navy, Rabbi
Walt should know that the ships are brought to the port of Ashdod, where their
cargo is checked for weapons and other military items. Once these are removed
and destroyed, the cargo proceeds to Gaza City via the trucks mentioned above.
Rabbi Walt's fast today? I see no reason to join him.
SEYMOUR BRODSKY
Jerusalem
Whipping boy
Sir, - Our Jewish leadership seems totally devoid of Jewish pride. I thought the
bottom had been reached when, during the Annapolis conference in 2007, a senior
member of the government and entourage were forced to enter the meeting room
through a kitchen door as the other party refused to sit with the Israeli
contingent unless it complied with this outrageous request.
Sarah Honig's "In the footsteps of Sam Lewis's suck- ups" (UpFront, July 10),
recalling prime minister Menachem Begin's attitude toward then US ambassador Sam
Lewis should (but won't) serve as an example to today's politicos.
The more Israel acts like a powerless beggar, the more it will be treated like
one. Before the elections, voters hoped Netanyahu had changed his stripes. Now
the electorate has seen him in action, folding like a fan in dealing with the
American government.
Until we have a government that believes in the people of Israel, the Land of
Israel and, yes, the Torah of Israel we will be the whipping boy of the world.
RUBY RAY KARZEN
Jerusalem
Karachi Jews
Sir, - Re David Horovitz's "Because there are no Jews in Pakistan..." (September
12, 2008) and one Dr. Ishaac Moosa Akhir, living in Karachi:
I am in the final stages of writing a book on the different communities that
live in Karachi, a city of over 17 million. I was born here, have lived in this
city nearly all my life and seen it grow and change in the last 50 years and
more. In the process of compiling data, I have identified over 60 different
communities on the basis of religion, ethnic or geographic background,
profession, etc.
From the very beginning of my research more than a year ago, I have been
inquiring about the Jews, if any, living in this city. All roads led to one
Rachel Joseph, said to have died a few years ago. Others who had some knowledge
about the Jewish community in Karachi said my research would not lead me
anywhere, since it would be extremely difficult to find any members here today.
And if found, they would be unwilling to come forward and communicate.
While I fully appreciate such concerns, I was encouraged to appeal to anyone
having specific information of interest to me for my book to kindly e-mail
husain.rumana@gmail.com
RUMANA HUSAIN, Karachi
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
The legal assault on Israel is gathering speed
BYLINE: GERALD M. STEINBERG
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 913 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer is the executive director of www.ngo-monitor.org and
chairs the Political Science Department at Bar-Ilan University. Caroline B.
Glick is away.
Although talk of peace, "two states for two peoples" and the "Arab League
initiative" fill the lofty speeches of American and European leaders, the
political war to delegitimize Israel is accelerating.
Officials of the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority, working with
powerful groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam,
exploit the rhetoric of international law to brand Israeli defense against
terror as "war crimes" and "collective punishment." As a result, talk of peace
process continues to be a faade, demonstrating that the core ideology and
objectives - the elimination of Jewish sovereignty and statehood - remain
unchanged since 1947.
The Gaza war that took place six months ago, like the 2006 Second Lebanon War,
provided major platforms for accelerating political warfare against Israel.
Erasing the context of Hamas rocket attacks, this coalition uses international
frameworks to pursue a campaign of delegitimization. The UN Human Rights
Council's Goldstone Commission, with a mandate that found Israel guilty before
any "evidence" was gathered, is one example, and there are many more.
These objectives unite the "moderates" and "radicals" who, on other issues, are
bitter enemies. In theory, the PA, dominated by Yasser Arafat's old Fatah
organization, is supposed to be the moderate wing and Israel's peace partner,
while Hamas, which controls Gaza, is the militant Islamic terror group. But in
campaigns to label Israel as an "apartheid state," Mahmoud Abbas' PA and Amr
Mousa's Arab League are on the front lines.
A PROMINENT example of this division of labor, and the faade of the peace
process, is seen in the efforts to use the International Criminal Court as
another front in which to attack Israel over Gaza. While standing in the ICC is
supposedly limited to state parties, and the PA does not qualify, its leadership
manipulated the system in filing a declaration aimed at opening a case against
Israel.
The ICC was created in 1998 ostensibly to deal with cases of genocide and crimes
against humanity in instances where the national courts do not function, such as
in Rwanda or in brutal military dictatorships. But like the NGOs and the UN's
human rights frameworks, moral principles have been hijacked for ideological
campaigns, particularly targeting Israel, which resisted calls to join the ICC
precisely for this reason.
On February 13, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo met with PA Foreign Minister
Riad Malki and Justice Minister Ali Khashan. The ICC's press release noted that
"326 communications under Article 15" had been already submitted "by individuals
and NGOs, related to the situation context of Israel and the Palestinian
territories." In the months that followed, many more such "communications,"
primarily from NGOs that lead the anti-Israel campaigning, have been added to
the file.
The Arab League and Amnesty International have presented the ICC with
unsubstantiated claims of Israeli war crimes. Such "research reports" consist of
lengthy compilations from Palestinian "eyewitnesses," accompanied by
pseudo-technical analysis with no methodology and no credibility. John Dugard, a
virulent anti-Israel campaigner and recipient of the "Gaddafi Human Rights
Prize," was its chairman. But Moreno-Ocampo has ignored such details, and on
July 1, he published an article in The New York Times ("Impunity no more") which
highlighted this bogus "first- ever fact-finding report on crimes committed in
Gaza." Inadvertently exposing the moral absurdity, Moreno-Ocampo listed the Gaza
campaign with instances of mass murder in Africa and similar examples.
The role of the Arab League in delegitimizing Israel is central, and provides
another reason that Israelis do not take the talk of peace and the various
"initiatives" seriously. While exploiting the ICC to purse attacks against
Israel, the Arab League rejected the court's decision to open proceedings
against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir over the mass murder in Darfur.
IN ADDITION, European governments, including the leaders of the European Union,
such as foreign policy head Javier Solana (who wants the UN Security Council to
impose a Palestinian state), have a major role in anti-peace campaigning. They
provide the tens of millions of tax euros every year to radical NGOs that lead
this process, under the faade of "partnerships for peace" and the "European
Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights."
For example, the EU, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and other governments fund the
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (to its credit, the Ford Foundation has
ceased support), which prepared the agenda and coordinated the "field visits"
for the 254-page Arab League report.
PCHR is a leader of anti-Israel lawfare in Spain and elsewhere, referring to the
murder of Israeli civilians as acts of "resistance." Its reports list terrorists
as civilians, including Nizar Rayan, a major Hamas terror leader who sent his
own son to commit mass murder in a 2001 suicide bombing. By funding PCHR and
dozens of similar groups that are responsible for this political warfare,
European governments ensure the failure of their own policies.
If the claims of seeking peace are to be taken seriously, the leaders of this
assault against Israel's legitimacy through exploiting international law and
human rights need to reverse course. This group includes the Arab League, the PA
and European governments that facilitate this warfare in the media, the ICC and
elsewhere.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2009 Friday
The tennis lesson
BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 1242 words
HIGHLIGHT: EDITOR'S NOTES
One of the perks of working as The Jerusalem Post's correspondent in London in
the late 1980s was that for three successive years I got to go to Wimbledon -
free of charge, and without having to line up outside overnight.
Shlomo Glickstein, who had made the occasional ripple at the All England Club -
notably losing to champion Bjorn Borg on the hallowed Center Court in the second
round in 1980 - was fading. But this was the (relative) heyday of Amos Mansdorf,
a top 20 player whose game worked well on grass. Since it could be reasonably
argued, therefore, that an Israeli stood a chance - albeit an outside chance -
of progressing some distance in the tournament, the organizers bestowed upon the
Post a coveted access-all-areas press pass.
This accreditation even afforded me a seat, when space allowed, on Center Court
- there to watch the likes of Becker and Edberg, Graf and Sabatini, duelling it
out for the singles' championships.
Mansdorf, a rather sullen court presence, though pleasant enough in the
post-match press conferences, never did make it beyond the fourth round at
Wimbledon. In my (doubtless distorted) memory, he's always going down to narrow
defeat at the hands of an elegant crowd favorite named Henri Leconte, a
wavy-haired Frenchman who, like many superior competitors, seemed somehow to
have more time than his opponents to conceive and play his shots.
But each year, hope of improbable Israeli success flourished anew - which is
why, in one of my life's more ignominious episodes, I found myself still at
Wimbledon watching the tennis one summer's afternoon a little more than 20 years
ago, when I should have been on the train to the airport and a flight to Israel
for my wedding.
Mansdorf (fortunately for me) lost in fairly short order that day, I caught the
plane and made it to my wedding. But the memories of those years of Israeli
disappointment at Wimbledon had lingered... until the last few days.
For this was the week when, in a fitting prelude to the Maccabiah "Jewish
Olympics," Israel's tennis players more than compensated for decades of
intermittent reasonable prowess and more frequent mediocrity. Indeed,
notwithstanding various basketball titles, Olympic medals and 1970's World
(Soccer) Cup qualification, this was the week when our men's tennis team
provided Israel with arguably its greatest ever sporting achievement.
LESS THAN four years ago, Israel shuffled along among the also-rans of world
tennis. In the Davis Cup men's team tennis tournament, we were one defeat away
from banishment from Europe-Africa Zone Group One, the level below the elite
top-16 World Group. The players were disunited. Some were in dispute with the
Israel Tennis Federation. "Had we fallen to Zimbabwe [in a crucial relegation
playoff in September 2005], we'd have found ourselves playing against real
minnows like Egypt and Ireland," notes the Post's sports reporter Allon Sinai.
But new captain Eyal Ran, while never a top player himself, turned the team
around, restored unity, resolved the disputes and evidently created a remarkable
sense of self-belief. So much so that, last weekend, Israel achieved the
hitherto unthinkable, crushing the world's top-ranked nation, Russia, to reach
the Davis Cup's final four.
The turnaround - from mediocrity to glory - is all the more remarkable for
having been achieved with the same core group of players. Three of this week's
victorious quartet - Dudi Sela and the doubles pairing of Andy Ram and Yoni
Erlich - were representing Israel at the time of the 2005 low. Only Harel Levy
was missing four years ago.
Levy, who had aspirations to true tennis stardom before a serious hip injury all
but finished his career eight years ago, was the initial hero this time,
sensationally defeating a Russian opponent ranked almost 200 places above him.
The diminutive Sela - whose official height of 1.74 looks, shall we say,
optimistic - continued the good work with a second singles victory on day one.
And the duo affectionately known as "AndyYoni" finished the job - though not
without some serious wobbling - on day two.
There'd been misgivings about playing the tie in the 11,000-seat Nokia Arena, as
opposed to Ramat Hasharon's smaller outdoor Canada Stadium. But the move to the
indoor venue paid off handsomely - more fans got to see the game, and to make
their presence felt. Exhausted but ebullient, Ram and Erlich both hailed the
crowd for lifting them to victory against a Russian duo in which former world
No. 1 Marat Safin, after a sluggish start, had shown dangerous signs of
regaining his deftest touches.
In the closing stages of Levy's and Sela's games last Friday, the crowd's
support literally shook the arena. When "AndyYoni" lost the third and fourth
sets in their five-set epic the next day, the fans never wavered - urging the
pair forward, raising the noise level whenever Ram pumped his fists to demand
their greater involvement.
Locally beloved and globally successful though they have been, the Ram-Erlich
partnership has not been entirely heavenly of late. Ram, the more charismatic
and gifted player, enjoyed a great deal of success in the past year with Max
Mirnyi of Belarus as his partner while Erlich was recovering from injury, and
did not immediately renew the all-Israeli pairing.
But against Russia, this and all other irritants were put aside. And Israel -
the team that was brought back from the brink of tennis purgatory by captain
Ran; the team that came through in March against Swedish hosts who capitulated
to anti-Israel activists by ordering their game in Malmo played with no fans
present - is now just one match away from the Davis Cup final.
WATCHING WITH her family from her home in Shilo, either side of Shabbat, Daphne
Bazer, the great- granddaughter of Dwight Filley Davis, the man who gave the
world this admirable exercise in team tennis, could not have been prouder. Her
distinguished ancestor, who also served as secretary of war under US president
Calvin Coolidge, had hoped the competition would "bring countries together... to
foster cooperation and understanding," she told the Post this week.
The pusillanimous Swedes failed that test, Bazer said. And it's an open question
as to whether Dwight Davis would have approved of the Israeli crowd's raucously
partisan clamor against Russia. But what Davis's competition has emphatically
done for Israel is demonstrate, in a whole new field, how much can be achieved
when people pull together toward a shared goal. The whole is so much greater
than the sum of its parts.
Of course, individually, as the victorious players acknowledged in their
ecstatic post-match interviews, Israel can make no claim whatsoever to be one of
the world's four tennis superpowers. Spain, where we will play the semifinal in
September, boasts eight men in the world's top 50; we have two in the top 200 -
Sela at No. 30, and Levy at 183 - and only two more in the global top 1,000. But
together.... together, almost anything is possible.
"What a team!" marveled Ram in the sweaty euphoria of victory, after he'd dashed
around the stadium with his head in his shirt in a crazed victory dance. "As a
team we are No. 1 in the world."
"We are united, and everybody pushes everybody," his captain elaborated. "Slowly
we have put together a team that has galvanized into a homogeneous unit - that
rises to the big occasions and plays above itself."
There's a lesson for Israel here. And it has very little to do with tennis.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: CONQUERORS OF RUSSIA. 'As a team,' exalted Andy Ram (center,
with Erlich, and captain Ran in the background), 'we are No. 1 in the world.'
(Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1072 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
Channel 10 flickers
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 730 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
It's sad to see any news outlet, print or electronic media, cease operating. Yet
in these hard times more and more newspapers, magazines and broadcasting
stations are being forced to shut down. This shrinks the public's choice and
limits exposure to alternative voices - assuming, of course, that those
enterprises did in fact offer content unavailable elsewhere.
News that Israel's Channel 10, which can be viewed most easily on satellite or
cable, may be going out of business is being portrayed as a grievous loss to
democracy. That may be taking matters too far in describing what is a business
failure. It seems aimed at extracting additional financial backing from
overstrained taxpayers.
But that's the tack being taken by both Channel 10's franchise-holders and its
understandably anxious employees, even if their official line is that they are
not asking for actual cash outlays.
All they're ostensibly seeking is a drastic reduction of fees and changes in
contractual terms, which amount to the same thing - massive write-offs charged
to the public coffers.
The channel's looming demise is being unabashedly presented as a civic and
cultural calamity that must be averted for the public's good - even if it's at
the public's expense. Yet, undesirable as Channel 10's demise would be, it is
not a national calamity.
Channel 10, chartered by the Second Authority for Television and Radio and
launched in January 2002, is a commercial venture. Its news division has
steadily entrenched itself and secured an audience. Its entertainment division,
though, frequently seeks the lowest common denominator - like its main
competitor, Channel 2. Channel 10's fare has lately been led by shallow
imitations of lowbrow foreign hits like Survivor, Beauty and the Geek, America's
Next Top Model, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Jeopardy.
The channel's majority shareholders, who have thus far kept it going, have
announced that as of August, they will discontinue funneling more funds into
what has become a bottomless pit. They say the only thing that would change
their position is Channel 10's being granted independent licensee, rather than
franchisee status. That would save them periodic fees which, they assert, they
cannot afford. They also want the government to forgive a NIS 330 million debt.
Meanwhile, Bank Leumi is cutting the station some slack on a NIS 150 million
debt.
The communications minister has expressed support for the struggling channel,
describing it as "a great national asset." The finance minister is being
involved as well. Perhaps warnings that Channel 10 will close are partly aimed
at getting the NIS 50 million franchise renewal fee waived.
CHANNEL 10 isn't Israeli television's sole basket case. Even ratings-grabber
Channel 2 isn't doing all that well, while the state-owned Israel Broadcasting
Authority's Channel 1 constantly struggles for cash.
All the stations are strangled by red tape and over- regulation. All are
administered by cumbersome bureaucracies and badly run. All could doubtless
improve their financial health if freed from regulation. But at what cost to the
viewers?
Both commercial channels are notorious for crassness, sensationalism and a
penchant for titillation. Both offer offensive content during prime time, when
families may be watching together.
Channel 1, less prone to titillate, fails to generate mega-ratings. But if any
channel deserves taxpayer bolstering, Channel 1 is our preference. There is
sense in investing in civic-minded public broadcasting as an alternative to the
mostly tasteless and tacky commercial stations.
Yet even Channel 1, which is partly subsidized by a television tax, needn't
depend exclusively on state handouts. There is no reason why it should not
greatly expand the advertising it currently allows while avoiding the vulgarity
sometimes seen on its commercial competitors. The station might take a page from
the America's Public Broadcasting System, which permits tasteful, palatable,
commercial and private sponsorship of programming.
Television-watching Israelis have never had more channels to choose from - yet
many of us are left feeling that the pickings are slim. We wish Channel 10 well,
knowing that market rules will determine its fate. The public interest, however,
is best served by spending on Channel 1, and by insisting that the bar for the
quality of its programming be set high.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
Build a museum of Arab terror
BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 776 words
HIGHLIGHT: The suicide bombings of the mid-'90s are already being forgotten.
Fundamentally Freund
In the Finnish city of Tampere stands one of the strangest exhibitions in all of
Europe. Located inside the hall where Vladimir Lenin first met Joseph Stalin in
1905, the Lenin Museum traces his life and work as he rose to power and built a
communist empire.
It dates back to the Cold War, when the Soviets sought to spread socialist
propaganda in the West, and is now owned and operated by the Finland-Russia
Society with support from the Finnish Ministry of Education.
And while the curators of the museum insist that it presents a "critical"
approach to Lenin and his labors, that is far from being the truth.
Having studied Soviet politics in my university days, I visited the museum last
month expecting to find a balanced account of the man and his deeds. After all,
Lenin persecuted, imprisoned and murdered his political opponents - both
perceived and real, set up concentration camps for his enemies, brutally
liquidated vast swathes of the Russian peasantry and engineered massive famine
in the countryside.
All this in addition to bequeathing to the world totalitarian Soviet rule and
paving the way for Stalin and his ruthless regime.
But you would never know it from the material on display in Tampere. Instead,
the museum's guide is full of laudatory honorifics, hailing Lenin for rallying
the Russian masses "to defend the socialist fatherland."
"Under his leadership, the people resisted the enemies of the revolution ever
more strongly," reads the written guide to display case 13.
Lenin may have died in January 1924, "but his ideas and deeds live on," the
museum helpfully assures its visitors.
After engaging in a somewhat-heated argument with the museum's employees over
the unbalanced picture they presented of their subject, I left a few scathing
comments in the guest book and walked out shaking my head in disbelief.
Sure, one could dismiss this place as an anachronism, a holdover from the Cold
War more worthy of ridicule than respect. But the fact is that museums matter.
They are society's way of telling a story, of building a narrative about the
past to educate future generations. There is no telling how many people might be
affected by what they see within its halls.
And it just seems so absurd that instead of telling the story of Lenin's
victims, this odd little museum would prefer to glorify their killer.
BUT IT did get me thinking: Look how easy it is to distort history and to cast
aside those who were terrorized, tortured and killed. Indeed, here we see this
on a daily basis in how much of the mainstream media reports the conflict in the
Middle East. History is being written, and the truth is being twisted, before
our very eyes every day.
What will happen 25 or 50 years from now, when people look back on the events of
today? Will anyone remember the recent struggle of the people of Sderot and the
rockets they endured, or the suicide bombings? I suspect that much of this is
already being forgotten, if only because of the natural human tendency to try to
bury the painful past.
But we must take steps to ensure this does not occur, and that the truth is not
obscured by propaganda. The government therefore should build of a museum of
Arab terror with the goal of documenting and commemorating the victims of Arab
violence. Such a museum would not only serve to remind its visitors of the
immense human suffering that terror has inflicted on Israel over the decades,
but would also honor those who lost their lives to this scourge.
Though a monument to victims of terror was established on Mount Herzl, where an
annual ceremony is now held on Remembrance Day, much more can and should be done
to perpetuate their legacy - and a museum can do just that.
With effective displays and relevant historical information and photographs,
such a museum can help to educate the public about the past and thereby better
prepare them for the future. And it will help to counter those who try to
falsify our history.
Like it or not, the only way to truly appreciate the difficulties this country
has faced, and to comprehend its struggle for survival, is to study and
understand the phenomenon of Arab violence and hatred.
Upon completion, the museum of Arab terror should become a mandatory part of
every foreign dignitary's state visit, and it should be incorporated into the
curriculum of every high school student in the country.
It might sound like a dismal or gloomy theme upon which to base an exhibition.
But museums are akin to a nation's collective memory bank, and one never knows
the impact they can have. The erection of a museum of Arab terror would be an
important step toward ensuring tthe victims will not be forgotten.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: THE LENIN MUSEUM in Tampere, Finland. Instead of telling the
story of Lenin's victims, this odd little museum prefers to glorify their
killer. (Credit: Michael Freund)
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1074 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
Letters
BYLINE: Joy Wolfe, Leonard Zurakov, C. Brender, Miriam Amgad, Michael Gross,
Larry Stern, Sidney Handel, Mattias Rotenberg, Zev Chamudot, Chaya Heuman, Simon
C. Hsieh
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1129 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
No gift to diplomacy
Sir, - Congratulations on "Real mediation" (Editorial, July 14). The news that
Javier Solana is retiring as EU foreign policy chief, albeit with so many
critical issues unsolved, will not draw many tears from Israel's friends. Over
the years he has distinguished himself with a string of biased comments and
undue pressure on Israel to make all the concessions in the Israel- Palestinian
conflict.
His parting shot was particularly unhelpful, suggesting that he would impose a
settlement on Israel and declare a Palestinian state with or without Israel's
consent.
This one act alone is the perfect indication of just how little Solana has
understood about the history or current status of the conflict; it illustrates
his unsuitability for any mediation or observation role.
The conflict is littered with failed attempts by American presidents, the EU and
the UN, and indeed the UK, to impose unrealistic conditions on Israel. All of
them, almost invariably, have made matters worse, not better.
When it comes to issues regarding Israel's future, we need to tell the world
that the only people who can resolve them are the Israelis themselves, face to
face with anyone in the Palestinian leadership who has a genuine desire to make
peace with Israel rather than wipe the Jewish state off the map.
JOY WOLFE
StandWithUs UK and
Co-President, Zionist Federation
Manchester, UK
Bad judgment...
Sir, - So District Court Judge Moshe Drori has no regrets over not convicting
the yeshiva student who ran over a parking lot attendant who tried to stop him
from driving off without payment.
Good thing the student wasn't put up for a place on the Supreme Court - he might
have made it! ("High Court to ruleon driver who hit parking attendant," July
14.)
LEONARD ZURAKOV
Netanya
...on many levels
Sir, - Reading Seth J. Frantzman's "Where's the justice for a working-class
heroine?" (July 15), I don't know what outraged me more: that a rabbinical
student ran over an Ethiopian Jewish convert working as a parking attendant,
after refusing to pay her, and left her wounded in the street; or that he was
able to bring stellar character references from Shas head Eli Yishai and
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar; or that he was sentenced merely to community
service; or that his victim mysteriously then had her conversion stripped from
her.
What can we readers do to see to it that this amoral, conscience-lacking human
being - a religious Jew! - never becomes a rabbinical judge?
C. BRENDER
Mateh Yehuda
Sir, - This student may have a brilliant mind, capable of comprehending the most
abstruse talmudic point in no time at all.
But the public figures in the student's corner seem not to have understood that
this aspirant to the rabbinical judges' bench failed shockingly on the level of
simple human decency, as well as exhibiting injudiciousness under pressure, a
weak conscience, scant introspection and a blatant disregard of the law.
MIRIAM AMGAD
Jerusalem
Sir, - This seemingly unrepentant young man who denied his criminal act to the
police needs to be named and shamed and disqualified from ever being appointed a
rabbinical judge. Did he consider it permissible to run over someone as long as
they were female, Ethiopian, and/or a convert?
He needs to be punished more severely than 140 hours community service and a
token NIS 10,000 paid to his victim as compensation.
MICHAEL GROSS
Jerusalem
Sir, - The Israeli judicial system has hit an all-time low. The case of Noga
Zoraish is a disgrace to the ethical way we are taught to live our lives. Do not
let this travesty of justice continue.
LARRY STERN
Jerusalem
If you're not helping,
at least don't hinder
Sir, - It is a shame that not one of the Jewish leaders who met with Barack
Obama had the good sense to tell him a simple truth: American concern for
Israel's security is far less important than the US not preventing Israel from
being able to maintain its own safety.
Self-defense is not only the Zionist ideal, but an increasing necessity in
today's reality ("Obama fails to reassure some Jewish leaders," July 15).
SIDNEY HANDEL
Tel Aviv
Why the fuss?
Sir, - Two points: 1. Writer and historian Benny Morris, an expert on the Middle
East and someone who has always favored a two-state solution, has made it very
clear that the Palestinian Arab world will never accept a Jewish state here,
regardless of the conditions.
2. While visiting the US, Salaam Fayad, the PA finance minister, was asked by
the former head of the CIA, James Woolsey, whether Israelis could live within a
Palestinian state. His response was in the affirmative.
That being the case, one has to wonder: Why the big fuss over settlement
construction?
MATTIAS ROTENBERG
Petah Tikva
Anti-Bibi animus
Sir, - Although Jeff Barak does raise some legitimate points of criticism
relating to the first 100 days of the government's performance, his narrative
becomes completely ineffective because it is overwhelmed by an almost tangible
anti-Bibi animus. This biased perception permits viewing only Palestinian claims
as just while rejecting the validity of Israel's concerns ("Buckling under
pressure," July 13).
Barak goes so far as to view Nicolas Sarkozy's call for the dismissal of Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman as "understandable." Why is he not, like most
citizens of Israel, gravely offended by this grossly vulgar intrusion into the
internal affairs of the sovereign State of Israel?
ZEV CHAMUDOT
Petah Tikva
Credit the kids
Sir, - We all know the famous concept that in His spare time, God brings people
together for marriage. Unfortunately, there are marriages that go bad. So why
did God bring these people together to begin with? Perhaps the answer lies in
the couple's offspring.
While it is sad that the parental relationship did not last, I have observed
that such children are often the most amazing people you would want to meet,
especially when their parents are still available to them and make it clear they
are still loved.
Yes, divorce is traumatic for the parents, but let's give more credit to the
survival instinct of the kids ("How divorce scars people," Shmuley Boteach, July
13).
CHAYA HEUMAN
Ginot Shomron
Games are
soft power
Sir, - Congratulations on "18th Maccabiah kicks off " (July 14) successfully on
Monday night at Ramat Gan's National Stadium. Sports appearances are soft power
- that's why big countries strive for gold medals in the Olympics and other
sports contests.
The 2009 World Games will be held in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, July 16-26. An
Israeli delegation of 11 athletes and some crew members will participate in the
following sports: ju-jitsu, water skiing, ballroom dancing and petanque.
I hope your paper will follow the Israeli team in Taiwan, and that it will win
medals for Israel.
SIMON C. HSIEH
Taipei Economic
and Cultural Office
Tel Aviv
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The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
Bearing witness to the UN in Geneva
BYLINE: NOAM BEDEIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 774 words
HIGHLIGHT: We knew we would have only 30 minutes to convey how aerial terror has
devastated Sderot. The writer is director of the Sderot Media Center.
On July 6, I traveled to Geneva to testify before the United Nations Fact
Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. Participating in the delegation were
Ashkelon Mayor Benny Vaknin, Dr Alan Marcus, director of the strategic planning
branch in Ashkelon, Ophir Shinhar of Sapir College and Dr. Mirelda Sidrer, who
was wounded during a rocket attack on a medical facility at the Ashkelon mall.
The delegation also included Noam Schalit, who spoke impassionately on behalf of
his son, Gilad, who was abducted three years ago by terrorists and has since
been held by Hamas.
The government officially refused to cooperate with the UN mission, since the
investigation had already formulated conclusions asserting that Israel had
committed war crimes during the December-January war.
At the same time, however, the head of the UN fact- finding mission, South
African Judge Richard Goldstone, told the Israeli media that he would like to
hear both sides. "The aim of the public hearings was to let the face of human
suffering be seen and to let the voices of the victims be heard."
In preparation for the Geneva hearing, the UN mission invited the Sderot Media
Center to prepare material, footage and information regarding the impact of
bombardment from Gaza of the civilian population in the Negev during the war.
Before the hearing, the delegation received a briefing from Hillel Neuer, head
of the NGO UN Watch. He provided background on the fact-finding mission and the
agenda of each judge on the investigating board.
DURING THE DAYS leading up to the testimony, it was not easy to sleep - as the
only resident of Sderot and the Western Negev in this delegation - knowing that
there would be only 30 minutes to convey how aerial terror has devastatingly
impacted the civilian population. At the same time, the UN afforded an
opportunity for the Sderot Media Center, which specializes in communicating the
human story of Sderot and life under continuous rocket terror, to finally reach
the UN.
While the delegation got ready to testify, it was less than sobering to know
that the UN judges included Prof. Christine Chinkin from London. In a Sunday
Times article published on January 11, she supported the allegation that
"Israel's bombardment of Gaza is not self-defense, it's a war crime."
Israeli reporters in Geneva asked hard questions: Why testify before a such a
"neutral" judge who claims that Israel does not have the right to defend her
citizens and whose actions "amount to aggression violating international law and
human rights law?" Why testify when the government itself has boycotted the
investigation which already formulated it allegations against Israel before the
investigation commenced? However, the presence of a UN invited delegation from
Israel created a precedent.
Neuer noted that never in the 16 years of operating in Geneva had there been a
time when the UN invited and even sponsored a delegation from Israel to give
testimony - until now.
This time, the UN provided an opportunity for ordinary people from Israel to
make their voices heard across the world. It was an honor as a resident of
Sderot to participate in such an event.
YET THE long road to peace and justice for Sderot and Negev residents does not
end before a panel of UN judges or a commissioned report. Residents are
obligated to speak up and convey the experience of what it is like to live under
sustained rocket attacks, a terror act and crime against humanity.
After screening two short videos in front of the panel, which depicted the 15
seconds that Sderot residents and their children have to run for their lives
when the rocket alarm is activated, I concluded my presentation with the
following thoughts and questions.
"I do not have enough fingers to count on my hands the amount of times rockets
exploded just a few meters from a kindergarten. Would any other Western
democracy tolerate even one rocket being fired toward its territory? Why is it
that we must wait until a kindergarten or classroom packed with children is
struck directly by a rocket in order for Israel to gain international support,
to protect and do what is right for our own people?"
US President Barack Obama put it best when he visited a devastated home in
Sderot during the 2008 campaign: "If somebody was sending rockets into my house
where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to
stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing."
There were no questions or reactions from the UN judges. We will all have to
wait, along with all the residents of the South, to peruse the Geneva verdict on
the war when the UN mission report is released in September.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: NOAM BEDEIN in Geneva. For the first time, the UN provided an
opportunity for ordinary people from Israel to make their voices heard.
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1076 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
Britain's breathtaking double standard
BYLINE: JEREMY SHARON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 881 words
HIGHLIGHT: Consider the list of countries to whom the UK has recently supplied
arms. The writer is a researcher and writer based in Jerusalem. He has worked at
a number of Israeli think tanks and served in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.
The decision made this week by the British Foreign Office to cancel export
licenses for Israeli warship parts is not the first time Her Majesty's
Government has embargoed arms to Israel. In 1969, Harold Wilson's Labour
government reneged on its promise to supply Israel with the advanced Chieftain
tank, a project which Israel had helped develop. So the fact that the Foreign
Office, notorious for its unbalanced approach to affairs in the Middle East, has
once again decided to embargo Israel should not come as much of a surprise. But
the UK's concern for how its military equipment will be put to use by the IDF
rings rather hollow when considering the list of other countries to whom the UK
has recently supplied arms; countries which have not fallen foul of
Westminster's new "ethical" standards for weapons exports.
In 2008, while the civil war in Sri Lanka was raging, Britain sold $22 million
worth of armored vehicles, machine gun parts and semi-automatic pistols to the
government in Colombo. During the course of the Sri Lankan army's assault on the
last Tamil Tiger strongholds from January to May this year, approximately 20,000
civilians were killed.
The Foreign Office said of the cancelled Israeli contracts "We do not grant
export licenses where there is a clear risk that arms will be used for external
aggression or internal repression." The Sri Lankan army appears to have killed
more than 40 times the number of civilians in its campaign against the Tamil
Tigers than were killed in the IDF's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this
year, but we have yet to hear of any restrictions on British arms exports to Sri
Lanka.
And the story doesn't end there. In recent years, the UK has sold arms to
Algeria during the civil war there between 1991 and 1999. Components for
air-to-air missiles were sold to Pakistan during the period of Musharraf's
undemocratic rule. Recent British arms exports to China include components for
military navigation equipment and naval radar, military aero-engines and
technology for the production of combat aircraft. And the Foreign Office
approved the sale of shotguns and sniper rifles to Saudi Arabia, as well as
signing a contract with the Kingdom to supply it with 72 Typhoon fighter jets.
The double standard which the British Foreign Office has applied in defining
which countries are suitable customers for British arms is quite breathtaking.
China threatens Taiwan, occupies Tibet and brutally oppresses its own people.
Relations between Pakistan and India in the earlier part of this decade were
extremely volatile and the countries even teetered on the edge of nuclear
conflict in 2001-2002. And the atrocious record of Saudi Arabia's human rights
abuses is well documented. Yet, oddly, none of this has prompted London to
embargo weapons to any of these governments, despite its declared parameters
precluding the export of British arms to countries which might use them for
external aggression or internal repression.
BUT THE HYPOCRISY of the recent announcement is not perhaps the most concerning
aspect of this affair. What is more alarming is the specific focus of the
embargo, namely Israel's actions during Operation Cast Lead. The cancellation of
the export licenses would seem to imply that Britain views Cast Lead as Israeli
"external aggression".
It is extremely wearisome to continually repeat the same facts and arguments,
but after Israel absorbed 10,000 rocket and mortar attacks over eight years into
its sovereign territory, defining the IDF's operation in Gaza as aggression is
quite an Orwellian turn of phrase. If Cornish separatists were to shell Plymouth
or Welsh separatists would shell Liverpool, how long would it take the British
government to send in the Royal Marines? Not very long, one imagines.
What this embargo says is that the UK denies Israel the right to self-defence.
This was already made clear during Cast Lead when British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband, just two days after the operation began, issued a call for an
immediate cease-fire. Miliband ostensibly did not want Israel to destroy Hamas'
rocket arsenal, did not want Israel to destroy Hamas' smuggling tunnels and did
not want the extremist, rejectionist, Islamist terrorist group that is Hamas to
be defeated. Civilian casualties are always sustained in war as the UK knows
from its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this does not mean that wars
are therefore automatically illegitimate, much less defensive wars undertaken
after the utmost provocation.
Britain's decision to cancel the export licenses is perfectly in keeping with
its generally supine foreign policy, which, with regard to the Middle East,
seems to be dictated largely by domestic political concerns. From Miliband's
meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus last November to the
recent meeting between the British Ambassador to Lebanon and a senior Hizbullah
official, the UK's stance seems to be avowedly on the side of belligerent and
reactionary forces in the region. Golda Meir said that the British decision to
cancel the Chieftain contract was like "a bomb exploding above Israel's head".
The most recent cancellation is far less serious, but it throws into sharp
relief the fickle and self-serving nature of Israel's so-called friends.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: SRI LANKA's new army commander. Its army killed more than 40
times the number of civilians in its campaign against the Tamil Tigers than were
killed in Operation Cast Lead, but Britain has not restricted its arms exports
there. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1077 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
Our sons are lying again
BYLINE: Larry Derfner
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1064 words
HIGHLIGHT: Now there are the war stories of 14 conscript and 12 reserve IDF
veterans that we have to deny. RATTLING THE CAGE
First we saw the destruction of Gaza on TV, then we heard about it from
Palestinians, then from journalists (mainly foreign), then from the world's
leading human rights organizations. We didn't believe it, or we found ways to
justify it, but at any rate, we, the Israeli public, made sure the images and
words went in one ear and out the other.
Then in March some of our own boys, IDF soldiers, talked about it - the orders
that amounted to "when in doubt, shoot," the sniggering contempt for Palestinian
life and property, the exhortations to holy war from IDF rabbis. That seemed to
make a small dent in our consciousness for a couple days. But then the IDF
conducted its brief, naturally closed investigation, announced that the stories
were all hearsay and rumor, there was nothing to the accounts of an old woman
and a mother getting shot deliberately, nothing to worry about, you can all go
back to sleep now, and, of course, we did.
Now comes "Breaking the Silence," an organization of IDF combat reservists, with
the testimonies of 26 soldiers who served in Operation Cast Lead, and the
stories are very, very familiar, only they're much more detailed than what we've
heard before. Over 100 pages of testimony about the extraordinary scale of
destruction ("like in those World War II films where nothing remained"); the
vandalism ("In one house we entered I saw guys had defecated in drawers"); the
shoot-'em-up spirit ("The atmosphere was not one of fear but rather people too
eager to shoot other people"); the elastic definition of "legitimate target"
("suspects, lookouts, people standing on roofs and looking towards our forces,
making suspect movements on the roof, bending down, looking out beyond the
rim"); the firing of napalm-like white phosphorous in thickly-populated areas;
the killings of unarmed civilians in no-go zones; the rabbis' anti-Arab pep
talks; and much, much more.
There are no stories about atrocities, of classic war crimes - of deliberate
massacres of helpless civilians. In fact, there aren't that many Palestinians in
these stories at all - most of the civilians had fled their homes after the
IDF's warnings and Hamas fighters were mainly hiding, not fighting. The
neighborhoods the soldiers entered were largely, though not entirely, deserted.
THE MAIN impression I got from reading the stories (there's also a DVD with
videotaped testimonies of four soldiers) is that Operation Cast Lead wasn't a
war, it was an onslaught. The IDF basically flattened whole neighborhoods and
rural villages outside Gaza City and the refugee camps. (The city and camps were
left mainly to the Air Force.)
One soldier, a reserve combat medic, told me his unit spent a week in an
abandoned rural village where "about 50" houses had stood; by the time they
left, most of the houses were rubble. "I saw every kind of destruction I could
think of. Houses were blown up by airplanes, helicopters, artillery, D-9
bulldozers, machine guns, mortars," he said. The plan was to raze them all, he
added, but the army had to leave Gaza early, what with Barack Obama getting
inaugurated.
Why the deliberate destruction of abandoned homes? "The battalion commander told
us there were two reasons: One, to make sure none of the houses could pose a
threat to us, and two, for 'the day after.' We wanted to make sure the ground
was flat so that after we left, Hamas would have no place to hide."
The combat medic, a young, kippa-wearing father who studies Jewish philosophy at
university and whose living room wall is lined with holy books, also said an IDF
rabbi told him and a few of his comrades that "this was a war between the
children of light and the children of darkness," and that "we would not have to
account for our sins." The last thing the rabbi told them, he recalls, was this:
"Remember, guys, aim for the torso."
I don't know what depresses me more - these stories or the IDF's reaction to
them. You would think that after reading 100-odd pages of such testimony from 26
veterans of the war - 14 conscripts and 12 reservists - the IDF brass would at
least say it was disturbing, troubling, something.
No way.
"How do you know it's true?" an IDF spokesman told me over the phone. The
soldiers' identities are hidden, there's no way the army can check their
stories. Remember the accounts by the soldiers in the Rabin academy? They all
turned out to be false. Breaking the Silence has an "agenda," said the
spokesman.
I asked him if the IDF considered these fighters' accounts of the war to have
any meaning, any value. The spokesman couldn't think of any; instead, he just
repeated what he'd said about how the stories couldn't be checked, how Breaking
the Silence was "hiding behind the anonymity" of the soldiers, how it has an
agenda.
HE'S RIGHT. Breaking the Silence has an agenda - to tell the truth about what
the IDF is doing to the Palestinians, worst of all during Operation Cast Lead.
The IDF has an agenda, too - to hide it.
The IDF knows very well why those 26 soldiers remained anonymous: because if
their identities were known, they would be branded as shtinkerim - informers -
in the army, and their lives would become hell.
As for the earlier "debunking" of the Rabin academy soldiers' testimony, only in
Israel does anyone believe that the IDF's lightning-fast, closed-door
investigation was at all thorough, impartial or well-intentioned. To anyone
genuinely interested in the truth, it had all the makings of a whitewash. In
particular, the recanting by Danny Zamir, head of the Rabin academy, sounded
like something from Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
Now, on top of the TV footage from Gaza, the word of Palestinian victims,
journalists, human rights investigators and the Rabin academy soldiers, there
are the war stories of 14 conscript and 12 reserve IDF veterans that we have to
deny.
In a few weeks we'll be denying another report, that one by a UN committee
headed by South Africa's Judge Richard Goldstone, one of the bravest, finest
Jewish fighters for justice in modern times.
It doesn't matter who tells us the truth about what we did in Gaza - we'll deny
it. If the entire IDF General Staff called a news conference and admitted that
the evidence were true, we'd say they're leftists, they're kissing up to Obama,
they're lying.
Even if our own sons tell us it's true, we'll tell them they're lying. We're
telling that to another 26 of them right now.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: SMOKE AND FIRE caused by explosions from Israeli military
operations is seen on the outskirts of Gaza City last January. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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All Rights Reserved
1078 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
The Republicans' Jewish problem
BYLINE: Douglas Bloomfield
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 881 words
HIGHLIGHT: For Jewish voters, issues like church-state separation, abortion and
gay rights trump the party's enthusiasm for Israel. Washington Watch
The Republican Party has a Jewish problem. And a Hispanic problem. And an Asian
problem. And a black problem. And a female problem.
This week's hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court
illustrated the party's growing minority dilemma. It lost the Hispanic and
female vote in last year's election, and GOP senators aren't about to reverse
that by harping on the nominee's 2001 statement about the value of a "wise
Latina" on the bench. That could be a particular problem for someone like Sen.
John McCain (R-AZ), who is running for reelection next year in a state with a
large Hispanic population.
That's the same McCain who was supposed to create a "sea change" in Jewish
voting patterns last year by drawing a record number of Jewish voters into the
Republican column.
As the nation becomes more ethnically and racially diverse, the GOP is becoming
more monochromatic - white, rural, Christian, conservative, male and angry.
That's not the minority group it needs to take back the Congress or the White
House.
Even some of its own members are calling the party powerless, leaderless and
rudderless. The most recognizable voices of the party are Rush Limbaugh, Dick
Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin. Even Joe the Plumber quit the
GOP.
Of course, the role of the opposition party is to oppose, but it also has to
propose. It can't keep saying "No" without offering credible alternatives.
George W. Bush came to office promising to downsize the government and upsize
the party, and wound up doing just the opposite. Today, only one in five
Americans identifies as a Republican.
WHEN THE last Jewish Republican in the US Senate - Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania
- crossed the aisle to join the Democrats, Limbaugh, et. al, cheered, "Good
riddance." There is only one Jewish Republican in the 111th Congress, Rep. Eric
Cantor of Virginia, the minority whip. There are 30 Jewish Democrats in the
House and 13 in the Senate, record numbers.
For 20 years or so we've been hearing predictions by Jewish Republicans of a
mass migration of Jewish voters from the Democratic party, but the GOP has never
recovered from the damage done by George H.W. Bush's questioning the loyalty of
American Jews and trying to block loan guarantees to Israel in 1991.
The Jewish vote, which had been between 30 and 39 percent in 1980s, dropped to
11 percent in 1988; 20 years later it was up, but not to previous levels, at 22
percent.
The 1994 Gingrich revolution that gave the GOP control of both chambers for the
first time in 40 years, with support for Israel high on the party's agenda, was
expected to reverse the decline in Jewish support. But it failed.
The foundation of the new Republican majority was the staunchly conservative
Evangelical movement, and its positions on issues like church-state separation,
abortion, gay rights, civil liberties and other domestic topics important to the
Jewish community overshadowed its enthusiasm for Israel. After years of
resistance, Republicans began voting for foreign aid, the pro-Israel community's
number one legislative agenda, in large numbers.
It was at about that time that Israel peaked as the most important issue for
Jewish voters. If Jews ever were single-issue voters, that was clearly changing
in the 1990s. The reason wasn't a lack of interest but a feeling that both
parties were good in their support for Israel, which allowed Jewish voters to
focus more on other issues. That was bad news for Republicans, who were banking
on outspoken support for Israel would overshadow Jewish concerns on their
domestic agenda.
By 2008, only 3 per cent of Jewish voters felt Israel was the issue they'd most
like to hear candidates discuss, according to an American Jewish Committee
survey. In another poll, Israel tied for seventh place with illegal immigration
on a list of issues important to Jewish voters.
Jewish votes are not attracted by defending torture and waterboarding, opposing
gay marriage, banning abortion, cutting taxes for the wealthiest, trying to
privatize Social Security and cutting Medicare, blocking universal health
insurance and being identified, in the words of Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe
(ME), as "the party of big business, big oil and the rich."
WHAT CAN the GOP do about its Jewish problem? I asked a number of activists of
various persuasions, and the most frequent answer I got was hope that the anger
on the right toward Barack Obama's Mideast policies will spread across the
Jewish community and finally give them a bigger chunk of the Jewish vote in
2012. Hoping the opposition fails is not a formula for success.
The Republicans are doing much better when it comes to Jewish money; indeed,
some party pragmatists say Jewish campaign dollars, not votes, are what GOP
leaders are really after. Jews are disproportionately large contributors to both
parties, especially among a number of very large Republican givers, a party
operative said. There are fewer Jewish GOP donors, but the size of their
donations is larger, he said.
I believe it is in the interest of the Jewish community - in both foreign and
domestic policy - to be well represented in both parties, but so long as the
Evangelicals and social conservatives set the Republican agenda, Jews will keep
voting overwhelmingly Democratic.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: SEN. JOHN McCAIN appears on 'Meet the Press' on Sunday. Some
party pragmatists say Jewish campaign dollars, not votes, are what GOP leaders
are really after. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1079 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 16, 2009 Thursday
The case against Obama
BYLINE: Isi Leibler
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1512 words
HIGHLIGHT: A response to American Jews who challenged me to demonstrate how his
policies are harming Israel. Candidly Speaking
Prior to the election, many traditional Jewish supporters of the Democratic
Party were apprehensive of Barack Obama's initially negative attitude to Israel
and his troubling association with people like PLO ideologue Rashid Khalidi and
the anti-Semitic Rev. Jeremiah Wright.Ê However after aggressively repudiating
his earlier policies, Obama convinced most Jews that he would never abandon the
Jewish state. Alas, recent developments suggest otherwise.
President Obama is adept at warming the cockles of the hearts of his Jewish
constituents, many of whom seem as mesmerized by him as their forebears were by
Franklin D Roosevelt. He repeatedly articulates his commitment to the welfare of
Israel and admiration for American Jewry.
Yet if one probes beneath the veneer of bonhomie and analyzes the substance of
his policies, they reflect an unprecedented downturn in relations towards Israel
with hints of worse to come.ÊThis was reaffirmed by Obama in the course of his
recent meeting with Jewish leaders (which included representatives of extremist
fringe groups like Peace Now and J Street but excluded those likely to be
critical of his approach). In an extraordinary patronizing manner with his
Jewish aides beaming at him he told Israelis to "engage in self reflection" and
made it clear that he believed he had a betterÊ understanding of what is best
for them than their democratically elected government. Alas, with the exception
of Malcolm Hoenlein and Abe Foxman, it appears that the majority of the others
endorsed his position or remained silent. Yet only a few days earlier even a
passionate Democrat like Alan Dershowitz had expressed concern "that the coming
changes in the Obama administration's policies could weaken the security of the
Jewish state".
THIS COLUMN is a response to American Jews devoted to Israel who remain under
the charismatic spell of their president and challenged me to demonstrate how
his policies are harming Israel.
President Obama's keynote Cairo address included effusive praise for Islam,
highlighted Western shortcomings but omitted mention of global jihad and Islamic
fundamentalism. It also legitimized the Arab narrative including its malicious
and false historical analogies. By alleging that the State of Israel was a
by-product of the Holocaust, the president of the United States denied 3,500
years of Jewish history and the central role of Jerusalem in Judaism. He
endorsed the Arafat mantra that Israel had been inflicted upon the Arabs by the
Europeans to compensate for the Holocaust, even hinting at equivalence between
Jewish and Arab suffering. Obama ignored the rejectionism, ongoing wars and
waves of Arab terror directed against the Jewish state since the day of its
creation. He also compared the Palestinians to the US civil rights movement.
When the president of the world's greatest superpower provides an imprimatur for
such a false narrative it represents a major breakthrough for those seeking to
delegitimize Israel.
Obama's Cairo address should be viewed as an extension of a calculated policy
designed to appease the Arab world by playing hardball with Israel. Obama's
response to the brutal Iranian regime's thuggish clampdown on its own people was
inordinately restrained. He bowed and scraped to the Saudis, unconditionally
renewed diplomatic relations with the Syrians and failed to respond to the
latest brazen North Korean missile launches. His "engagement" and benign
relationship with corrupt and despotic Arab regimes contrast starkly with the
tough diktats conveyed to Israel.
The confrontation with Israel goes far beyond the vexed settlement issue which
was wrongly linked with curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions and has been
exaggerated totally out of proportion.
Israel endorsed the road map and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu unequivocally
undertook to freeze settlement expansion in areas other than within the
settlement blocs which the Bush Administration had implicitly agreed should
remain under Israeli sovereignty. Even in these areas Netanyahu undertook to
limit growth to "enabling normal life." But either disregarding or cynically
abrogating understandings by the former administration, Obama's demands exceeded
even those of Arafat's when the 1993 Oslo Accords were negotiated.
Today, no city outside the Islamic world denies Jews the right of residence.Ê
Yet Obama is demanding that for the first time since 1967 Jews will no longer be
entitled to build a single home beyond the old armistice lines, including Jewish
sections of Jerusalem and adjacent areas like Ma'aleh Adumim. No Israeli
government of any political composition could conceivably accept such a demand
which even opposition Kadima spokesmen condemned as outright "extortion."
NOT SURPRISINGLY, the Palestinians and Arabs are delighted with Obama's
humiliation of Israel. Saeb Erakat, the chief PA negotiator, proclaimed that the
Palestinians need make no concessions because the longer the process extended,
the more they would benefit from further unilateral Israeli concessions.
Washington Post journalist Jackson Diehl, not renowned as a pro-Israel
supporter, observed, "[Obama] revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that
the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions whether
or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and
applaud."
The reality is that Arab concerns are not related to settlements or boundaries.Ê
Both Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas rejected offers to return virtually all
territories Israel gained in the 1967 war - a war initiated by the Arabs to
destroy the Jewish state. "The gaps were too wide" said Abbas, after Olmert
offered him the equivalent of all territories beyond the Green Line, including
joint control of the Temple Mount. They adamantly demand the right of return for
Arab refugees, which would effectively bring an end to the Jewish state.
Clearly, the overriding objective for the PA, no less than Hamas, remains, not
two states but two stages leading to the demise of the Jewish state. In recent
weeks there was a spate of Fatah statements on official PA-controlled media
brazenly describing the negotiations as a vehicle to destroy Israel. "Peace is a
means not a goal. Our goal is all Palestine," said Fatah activist Kifah Radaydeh
on PA TV and also affirmed that "armed struggle" is still on the cards.
If Obama was genuinely even-handed, he would urge the "moderate" Palestinians to
recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He would make it clear that the US would
never support the repatriation of the descendents of the Arab refugees to
Israel. Obama would call on Abbas to stop sanctifying martyrs and naming
streets, sports teams and other projects (some of which are sponsored by the US)
after Palestinian suicide killers and murderers and would monitor anti-Semitic
incitement in PA media, mosques, schools and kindergartens. And most
importantly, before demanding that Israel remove barriers and downgrade security
in Judea and Samaria, the US would insist that the PA curb its military wings
and cease all acts of terror.
But as of now, Obama's policy can be summarized as "Israelis should give and
Palestinians should take." It amounts to appeasing the Arabs, humiliating Israel
and in the process, undermining the security of the Jewish state.
ISRAEL IS not a superpower and needs to retain the support of the United States,
in the absence of which the United Nations, Europeans and the entire
international community would gang up against the Jewish state. It is no
coincidence that Javier Solana, the retiring EU foreign policy chief, has urged
the UN to determine the final borders, the status of Jerusalem and resolution of
the refugee problem and impose their solution. That the British government has
just announced what amounts to a partial arms boycott against Israel is another
example.
Netanyahu is doing his utmost to achieve a compromise and has already offered to
totally freeze all settlement activity beyond Jerusalem and the major settlement
blocs, which the vast majority of Israelis agree must be retained. But if the
Americans remain bloody-minded and refuse to compromise, Netanyahu will stand
firm on this issue and will be overwhelmingly supported by the people who are
outraged by the double standards applied against them.
In the meanwhile, the public reprimands and humiliations already underway are
eroding the US-Israel relationship and impacting on American public support for
Israel, which polls indicate is plummeting.
American Jews who voted overwhelmingly to elect Obama should not remain silent.
They are entitled to press him to adhere to his commitment and treat the Jewish
state in an even-handed manner. Together with other friends of Israel they
should discourage their president from offering Israel as a sacrificial lamb on
the altar of Arab appeasement. In urging Obama not to abandon Israel, they would
also be promoting the US national interest. History cannot point to a single
instance in which appeasement of jihadists or tyrants has ever borne fruit.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Playing hardball with Israel? President Barack Obama throws the
ceremonial first pitch during the first inning of the MLB All-Star baseball game
in St. Louis on Tuesday. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
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1080 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 15, 2009 Wednesday
Is 'Bruno' good for the Jews?
BYLINE: SIMCHA WEINSTEIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 932 words
HIGHLIGHT: Jewish performers like Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David and Sarah
Silverman all share offensive-yet-naive stage personae. The writer's latest book
is Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st Century (Barricade Books).
'What's up?" you ask. For one thing, the new movie, Bruno. The swishy,
semi-fascist fashionista Bruno is the fictional Austrian TV personality created
by the very real British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. In 2006, Baron Cohen broke
box office records (and probably a couple of laws) with his movie Borat, about a
foreign fictional reporter's adventures in America.
With their microphones in hand and cameramen at their heels, both characters
give Baron Cohen the unique ability, in our media-crazed age, to access people
and places few "real" people could get close to. The results are hilarious or
offensive - sometimes both - depending on your point of view.
As with Borat, the "plot" of Bruno is nonexistent. Bruno flies to Hollywood,
hoping to become "the most famous Austrian star since Adolph Hitler" and "the
biggest gay movie star since [Arnold] Schwarzenegger." Besides being a "take no
prisoners" iconoclast and equal opportunity offender, Sacha Baron Cohen is
Jewish. So, not surprisingly, there are cringe-making "Jewish" gags throughout
the new film. It's a carry over from Baron Cohen's old TV program (where the
character Bruno originated and, among other things, liked to rate red- carpet
looks as either "in the ghetto" - thumbs up - or "train to Auschwitz" - thumbs
down.
At one point in the new movie, the staggeringly tactless Bruno decides to become
a Middle East peacemaker, of all things. But he confuses the words "humous" with
"Hamas" in a high-stakes dialogue between real ex-Mossad agent Yossi Alpher and
equally authentic Arab leader Ghassan Khatib. Like everyone Bruno encounters,
the two men were baffled by his bizarre behavior.
Some of Bruno's unfortunate subjects end up making fools of themselves, like the
stage mothers and fathers who'll do anything to get their children a part in
Bruno's photo shoot. Would a mother consent to liposuction for her preschooler?
Bruno asks them with a straight face. Will their babies be comfortable working
with bees, wasps or hornets? Bruno suggests to one mother that her 30-pound baby
lose 10 pounds within seven days - and she eagerly agrees! When Bruno tells
another mother that her child would be expected to wear a Nazi uniform and push
a wheelbarrow carrying a Jewish baby into an oven, the mother calmly responds,
"That's fine, as long as he gets the gig." Remember: These are real people, and
they're not reading from scripts.
For better or worse, Borat helped make the nation of Kazakhstan a household name
(and international punch line). Baron Cohen's new alter ego might not have the
same effect for Austria, though in promotional interviews, Bruno says he wants
to "live the Austrian dream of finding a partner, buying a dungeon and starting
a family" (a reference to Austrian madman Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his
daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her). Austria
may not be a fascist nation, but right now it is experiencing a growth in
nationalistic, anti-immigration movements. Bruno is probably the last thing it
needs.
Which brings us to the eternal question: Forget the Austrians. Is Bruno good for
the Jews?
CONTEXT AND point of view are everything. They're what separate an insightful
gag in borderline taste from a tasteless joke that falls flat. Jewish performers
like Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David and Sarah Silverman all share
offensive-yet-naive stage personae. These seemingly oblivious characters charge
through life, offending everyone in their path, but not always intentionally.
They escort their audience through edgy routines that reveal a larger point of
view within a specific context. Along with Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David's show
"Curb Your Enthusiasm" satirizes the way we overvalue (fake) celebrity and
undervalue real history. Meanwhile, Sarah Silverman uses utter absurdity to
remind us of the gravity of the Holocaust, not to make fun of it.
By playing a fascist, not to mention a loudly "out" homosexual, Baron Cohen
forces audiences to confront their prejudices. His rationale seems to be: If you
beat your enemy to the punch line by getting in the first and last word, even if
you lose, you still win.
It's a dangerous game, though. How can Baron Cohen be sure that audiences "get"
his meta-humor? All in the Family creator Norman Lear was appalled to discover
that millions of viewers embraced Archie Bunker, a character he'd meant them to
despise. Comedians Chris Rock and David Chappelle dropped certain routines about
racial differences when they realized that some audiences liked them for the
wrong reasons.
In an interview with Rolling Stone when Borat first came out, Baron Cohen
explained the "minstrelsy" he employs in his anarchic humor: "When I was in
university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who
said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very
funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea
that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be
apathetic."
I'm a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, and respect the fact that we could all use a
good laugh or two. But I'm also a rabbi, so much of his raunchy humor makes me
deeply uncomfortable. It certainly isn't material for a Shabbat sermon.
That said, watching Bruno declare that fashion is more important than Darfur
reminds us there are many real-life, shallow "Brunos" out there in the media
world - deciding on a whim what the rest of us should wear, watch, read and
think - than many of us care to believe. In that respect, Bruno may serve as a
lesson to us all.
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Baron Cohen forces audiences to confront their prejudices.
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What he needs to hear
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 766 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
Whenever American Jewish leaders are invited to the White House to talk about
Israel - as 16 were on Monday evening - the prime purpose of the invitation is
not to give the machers an opportunity to sway the leader of the free world,
though their views may be genuinely sought, but for the administration to
diminish the prospect of them lobbying against the president's policies.
While none of Israel's leading Christian supporters - likely to sound a
discordant note - was invited on Monday, the heads of relatively marginal groups
lobbying for an American-imposed solution to the conflict were there, on a par
with the leaders of mainstream political, religious, fraternal and philanthropic
organizations.
Jewish personalities have been legitimately criticizing this or that Israeli
policy since the 1950s, long before the "occupation" and settlements. When the
settlement enterprise got under way after the 1967 war, American Jewish leaders
were not enamored. But so long as the Arabs were perceived to be in a zero-sum
conflict with Israel, Diaspora discomfiture over settlements was mostly muted.
That changed when the perception became one of an emerging moderate Palestinian
Arab leadership genuinely committed to a two-state solution.
Various administrations have since found it easier to pressure Israel into
concessions by dissociating the pro- Israel community from Israeli West Bank
policies, and by promoting American pressure as being in Israel's own best
interest. Today, we are witnessing a "perfect storm" of diffuse US pressure on
Israel.
Begin with the unyielding opposition to the settlement enterprise of every
administration since Richard Nixon's. Add the growing sense among establishment
figures that non- strategic settlements are an obstacle to peace. Consider that
the overwhelming majority of American Jews have never once visited this country
and have no understanding of the topography of the West Bank, or of Israel's
legitimate security needs. Then throw in the emergence of self- proclaimed
pro-Israel groups - stridently ideological, highly mobilized and well-funded -
advocating an American- imposed solution to the conflict.
Never has criticism of Israel been less nuanced and more unhelpful to fostering
peace.
Who can blame Barack Obama for exploiting this political environment to put the
screws on Israel? Answer: Those who realize that the settlement-freeze issue is
something of a red herring; that the non-zero-sum nature of Palestinian
intentions is far from assured; and that it is the Palestinians who are
inhibiting progress on a two-state solution.
AT MONDAY'S meeting, according to The Los Angeles Times, Obama told the Jewish
leaders that public disagreements between the US government and Israel were
useful leverage in the pursuit of peace. The AP synopsized Obama's position this
way: Eight years of demanding Palestinian concessions produced no results; it
was time to try a different tack.
If these accounts are accurate, it is depressing that Obama's words did not
elicit respectful dissent. Rather, as one rabbinical attendee told reporters, he
was keen to let the president have a go. Obama claimed that the media tended to
play up disagreements with Israel while ignoring his demands of the Arabs. If
so, that's probably because the administration's calls on Israel are public and
strident, while those on the Arabs are hushed and diplomatic.
We're not suggesting that Obama is substantively less pro-Israel than most of
his predecessors. But we are concerned over his refusal to embrace the 1967-plus
strategy enunciated by his predecessor, at a time when his administration is
demanding a freeze even to Israeli construction in Jerusalem areas captured in
1967. The furthest he seems willing to go is to hint that changes which have
occurred since 1967 will inevitably influence final-status negotiations.
IF THE administration feels it faces no countervailing pressure, it will go on
deepening the erroneous perception that settlements are the obstacle to peace.
This alienates Israel's majority, which is willing to make painful territorial
concessions, yet believes that ill-tempered calls for an unconditional freeze
everywhere only encourage Palestinian intransigence.
Pro-Israel Americans should caution Obama not to lose the Israeli "street" as he
seeks favor with the Arab one.
They need to say, loud and clear, that the principles enunciated by Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University - essentially supporting
Palestinian statehood within parameters that do not endanger Israel - deserve
the administration's strong backing.
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July 15, 2009 Wednesday
Where's the justice for a working-class heroine?
BYLINE: SETH J. FRANTZMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 796 words
HIGHLIGHT: A petite parking lot attendant is plowed down by a would-be
rabbinical judge as she attempts to collect his parking fee - and then finds her
conversion annulled. TERRA INCOGNITA. The writer is a PhD student in geography
at the Hebrew University and runs the Terra Incognita blog.
It is the basis for all judicial systems throughout the Western world: The Torah
enjoins us to "not side with the mighty to pervert justice... nor shall you show
deference to a poor man in his dispute" (Exodus 23:2-3).
But for Noga Zoraish, an Ethiopian Jewish woman working as a parking lot
attendant in 2006, there was no justice and there hasn't been since. In that
year, an adult male yeshiva student (an early court order forbidding the release
of his name has not yet been lifted) decided he didn't want to pay to leave a
supermarket parking lot. He saw a petite black woman working as the attendant
and decided that she didn't have the authority to request that he obey the law.
When he attempted to commit a crime and simply drive away, she heroically
blocked his car with her body. But the student was undeterred and instead of
observing the Jewish law he studies, which does not allow for causing bodily
harm and requires that restitution be paid in the case of injury, he kept
driving, hitting the woman. He drove as she clung to the hood of his car, and
then he fled the scene as she fell to the pavement, sustaining head injuries.
When tracked down by police, the student committed more crimes by lying to them,
even when confronted with videotape showing him bullying and harming the woman.
It goes without saying that had this incident happened in Jerusalem and had the
student looked like a Palestinian, he would have been shot by pedestrians
fearing another vehicular terrorist attack.
When the case came up before Judge Moshe Drori in September, he acquitted the
student of the various crimes he had committed (although he asked him to do
minor community service and pay inconsequential compensation). Drori made the
strange, and perhaps racist, remark that "the foundational event of [the
victim's] life, in which she was finally accepted into Israeli society as an
equal among equals, was the hearing before me."
Equal among equals? Is that how we initiate Ethiopians, by hiring them for
low-paying jobs, hitting them with cars and then letting those who hit them go
free? That is the "foundational event" of their aliya? No, the law should see
the yeshiva student and the immigrant as equals and judge them accordingly.
ZORAISH CAME up against even worse things than a vicious criminal and a banal
judge... something more corrupt. It turns out that the reason Drori did not
convict the student was because of fears that the conviction might damage the
student's chances of being appointed a rabbinical court judge. In fact Eli
Yishai, the head of Shas, had submitted a letter as a character witness on his
behalf, encouraging the judge not to harm the reputation of this up-and-coming
rabbi. Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shmuel Amar also provided character references, as
the perpetrator comes from a well-connected family and his father is the chief
rabbi of a major city.
How many drivers make dangerous swerves to avoid hitting a dog? Yet these
religious authorities thought it right that this yeshiva student, capable of
cold-bloodedly plowing down a woman, remain on track for a career in a religious
court.
AND IT gets worse. The Ethiopian woman was lulled into believing that the
student was remorseful during the trial. But according to her, he "continues to
say all sorts of things about me." Then suddenly on July 8, many months after
Drori had acquitted him and Zoraish had accepted his "apology," a rabbinical
court annulled Zoraish's conversion to Judaism, which took place six years ago.
It seems obvious that in daring to bring charges against the yeshiva student,
she had caused some rabbis to look into her background, and when they discovered
she was a convert, they found a reason to annul that conversion.
This is the height of a disgusting miscarriage of justice on numerous levels.
That a yeshiva student can run over a woman and get away with it because of his
connections and because a judge doesn't want to harm his career is bad enough.
For the yeshiva student to lull the woman into believing he was sorry, only to
then slander her, and for a court of supposedly religious Jews to then remove
her from the Jewish people all because one of their own hit her with his car to
get out of paying a parking tab, violates every tenet of Judaism. One cannot be
"deconverted" just because someone with connections has no respect for parking
fees or women that get in his way.
That is not written in the Talmud or the Torah. It is essential that judges look
into the connection between the person who harmed this woman and the fact that
her conversion was revoked.
Drori failed this poor woman when he acquitted the perpetrator. Justice has
failed this woman again and again. But it is written that God "will not acquit
the wrongdoer."
sfrantzman@hotmail.com
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Letters
BYLINE: Efraim Cohen, Howard Ginsberg, Josh Hasten, Ronnie Stekel, Meir Abelson,
Daniel Abelman, Yosef Hapaz, Sylvia Weiner
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1157 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Sauce for the goose?
Sir, - Spanish diplomat Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, says the UN
should impose its own solution if Israel and the Palestinians cannot agree
("Solana: UN should adopt two-state solution even without agreement," July 13).
I thought the UN tried that in 1947, calling for the creation of two independent
states with established borders.
Unfortunately, one of the parties decided it didn't like the idea of a Jewish
state in the neighborhood and set out to destroy Israel.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall the UN stepping in to force the objecting
party to accept a resolution (181) duly adopted by its members.
Solana believes the UN should make its own determinations regarding the
legitimate security concerns of one of its member states (Israel) and impose its
will even if that country disagrees.
I have a better idea: Recognizing that the Spanish government and Basque
separatist movement (ETA) have so far been unable to reach a peaceful settlement
to their long- standing dispute, I propose the UN declare the Basque region an
independent state with established borders and accept the new state as a full UN
member.
What's that, Mr. Solana? The UN has no right to impose a solution on two peoples
with arguably legitimate claims to the same territory, against the will of a UN
member state, especially when one of the parties has used terrorism to advance
its cause?
Funny you should mention that...
EFRAIM COHEN
Netanya
Our future, our call
Sir, - In "Out of Africa" (Editorial, July 13) you quoted President Obama as
saying in Ghana: "We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is
up to Africans - the West is not responsible for the destruction of the
Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, for wars in which children are enlisted
as combatants."
Nowhere did you state the obvious: that Israel's future is up to Israelis, and
that the West is not responsible for the Arabs' economy in the West Bank over
the last 61 years, during which women and children have been enlisted as suicide
bombers and human shields.
It's time we stood up to American presidents and told them, as Menachem Begin
did, that we are a sovereign nation that can't be told what to do.
HOWARD GINSBERG
Ma'aleh Adumim
Selective angst
Sir, - Re "US Rabbis call for monthly fast against Gaza blockade" (July 14):
Why haven't these rabbis, who seek to end what they call "collective punishment"
in Gaza, organized fast days to protest more than eight years of Kassams fired
at Sderot and the Western Negev by terrorists from Gaza?
With more than 75 percent of the children of Sderot suffering from mental trauma
as a result of these attacks, you would think these Jewish "spiritual leaders"
would do everything in their power to draw attention to the plight of their own
people living in Israel.
Alas, here you have a fringe group that has obtained significant media attention
- which only strengthens our enemies' resolve and legitimizes their violent and
murderous ways.
JOSH HASTEN
Jerusalem
Sir, - Rabbi Brant Rosen does not understand why it is important for Arab
governments and organizations to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
If they refuse this recognition, they make it clear they do not accept Israel as
Jewish and want to end it. If, on the other hand, they do recognize Jewish
Israel, then there is a chance for real peace, with each side accepting the
other's permanence.
RONNIE STEKEL
Jerusalem
Show some
self-respect
Sir, - So "Israel has 'no knowledge' of US deadline for settlement freeze" (July
12). And if she has - so what? Isn't it time we ceased behaving like a vassal
state and displayed some self-respect?
Israel today is prodded, pilloried and penalized by the US, the EU, the G8 and
similar alphabetical combinations for one reason only: She resists demands for
ceaseless gestures to those who for 60 years have tried to destroy her - and
have not changed their aim one whit.
For the past 40 years Israel has faced weapons more deadly than military
attacks: a massive propaganda campaign funded by unlimited petro-dollars; and
the invention in 1968 by Yasser Arafat of the "Palestinian people" as an
additional weapon against Israel.
The word "settlement" was first used by the League of Nations' Mandate, Article
6, which ordered the Mandatory Power to "facilitate Jewish immigration" and
"encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency... the close settlement of
Jews on the land including State lands and waste lands that are not required for
public purposes."
That has never been rescinded. The obligations of the League of Nations were
taken over by the United Nations.
Today, "settlement" has been transformed into a dirty word - invariably coupled
with the adjective "illegal" - for which there is no legal or other
justification. Jordan's king Hussein, who in 1948 illegally invaded what was
until then known as Judea and Samaria, renamed them the "West Bank" of his
kingdom. Until Israel ejected him in 1967, Israel was a tiny, indefensible strip
of land only nine miles across its narrow waist.
Between 1948 and 1967, so the story goes, a notice displayed in trains running
between Tel Aviv and Haifa read: "Please do not put your head out of the state."
Propaganda is not only destructive to truth, it is perhaps the most serious
threat to modern humanity. It certainly is to Israel.
MEIR ABELSON
Beit Shemesh
Retribution
Sir, - How crass the arithmetic: 15 years for 27,900 Jews ("Demjanjuk charged in
murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor," July 14). Demjanjuk faces four hours and 42
minutes in jail for every murdered body and soul.
DANIEL ABELMAN
Jerusalem
All you need
is vox populi
Sir, - Judging from the many letters you have published, many people are fed up
with the demonstrations against the opening of the parking lot in Jerusalem ("We
love Shabbat, but love other Jews more,"July 14).
The sponsors of these riots are the Eda Haharedit, the same people who provide
the widely used "Badatz" kashrut certification. Consumers who purchase products
with this certification are providing millions of shekels annually to finance
the activities of the Eda - including the objectionable demonstrations.
Were the public to refrain from purchasing these products, the cans pilling up
on the shelves would be returned to the manufacturer, who would in turn be
persuaded to terminate his association with Badatz.
YOSEF HAPAZ
Gush Etzion
Show-stopper
Sir, - The 18th Maccabiah - wow! What a wonderful opening show ("18th Maccabiah
kicks off," July 14).
What a pity it was spoiled by the commentators, who, as in previous years seemed
to be suffering from a dose of verbal diarrhea. They didn't stop talking. Why
have them at all? The commentary from the stage in Hebrew, English and Spanish
was excellent.
Also, as in previous years, the speeches by the prime minister and president
were in Hebrew, which thousands of our visitors did not understand. Why not in
English as well?
What a wasted opportunity.
SYLVIA WEINER
Netanya
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Gone, but not forgotten
BYLINE: JUDY MONTAGU
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1261 words
HIGHLIGHT: About loss, and carrying on. IN MY OWN WRITE
Loss. It's part of life, isn't it? Keys, pens, hats, umbrellas, eyeglasses,
books, jackets, gloves - all vanished without a trace, to who knows where.
Some items get found; a friend of mine discovered a long-missed sweater in her
freezer, frozen solid in a black plastic bag.
And London's Times reported last week on a research team led by psychologist
Richard Wiseman, who found that a lost wallet has an excellent (88 percent)
chance of being returned to its owner if it contains a baby picture. Second and
third best guarantors of recovery are a photo of a puppy (53%) and of a family
(48%).
"'The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from
an evolutionary perspective,' Wiseman said."
But many things stay lost for good.
As a child, I was very affected by the story of a boy whose lost possessions
returned at night to haunt and taunt him. They would dance around his bed as he
slept, chanting things like: "I kept you warm in winter - why didn't you take
better care of me?" "I helped you write your homework - why didn't you put me
away more carefully?"
The wretched boy was shocked into better custodianship of his belongings - and
so was I, fearful of waking up to find a mislaid jacket flapping its arms at me
malevolently, or a lost umbrella poking me in the stomach.
DURING a lecture on aging I attended many years ago, part of a course at the
Adler Institute in Tel Aviv, we were shown an entertaining and very well-made
film about elderly people who constantly mislaid things and, as a result, were
convinced they were "going senile."
Aside from advising, very sensibly, that regularly used items such as keys and
eyeglasses be allotted a fixed "home" - a particular shelf, for instance - the
psychologist-narrator pointed out that young people frequently lose things, too.
The main difference between them and seniors, he noted, was that youngsters
don't make such a big deal out of it. They take it in their stride, as they take
so much else, and never worry that they're losing their minds.
It's something to remember as the years roll on.
LOST possessions are one thing; lost people another.
The issue of personal loss was recently revived for me while visiting some
friends. Their daughter, in her early 20s, had just heard that the father of a
very close friend of hers had died of a terminal illness.
"Oh, Daddy," she cried, turning to her father, "I don't know what I'd do if I
lost you!"
This spontaneous expression of feeling echoed a fear of my own at that age, and
older: How would I survive once my parents were gone?
This fear was unconnected to material support or, indeed, to actual physical
survival; it was more a conviction that my essential substance and secure
existence in the world rested on those solid twin pillars of unconditional love
and support. The thought of my parents' passing engendered a dismal hollowness
that was quickly papered over.
In the event, my mother died when I was in my thirties, not long after I myself
became a mother - which seemed like a particularly cruel blow; my father 11
years after that.
And I did survive, because most people do, and because after a tragedy such as a
parent's death, you carry on. What other choice do you have?
IT WAS what my father had done, after all, when he looked around after WWII to
find that his father, together with a brother and sister, had been consumed by
the Nazi death machine - and this after an achingly brief encounter.
A moving chapter entitled "Found and Lost" in his autobiographical In and Out of
Harmony: Tales of a Cantor in the Hitler Era tells how, in November 1938, after
escaping the perilous aftermath of Kristallnacht in Munich, where he was
working, and arriving in Budapest, he decided to attend the Friday evening
service at a neighborhood synagogue.
"As I walked in," he wrote, "I could hardly believe my eyes. There stood my
father! I rubbed my eyes to convince myself that I wasn't dreaming... I rushed
over to embrace him... and together we listened to the Sabbath Eve service
before excitedly leaving to swap stories."
It turned out that his father, my grandfather, had been at home in Slovakia the
previous Friday night, about to recite the Kiddush, when a local policeman
accompanied by a German plainclothes officer walked in and extinguished the
Sabbath candles. The entire family - my grandfather and grandmother and my
father's seven brothers and sisters - were summarily rounded up, along with
other Hungarian nationals, deported to the Hungarian border, and dumped there.
"My mother and one of my sisters were now staying in a tiny room in the Jewish
quarter, my father told me; the other children had been farmed out to relatives
and friends in other parts of Hungary.
"I listened in awed silence to my father's tale, realizing that Hitler's madness
was spreading beyond Germany's borders. But I was overjoyed at our unexpected
reunion, little knowing how brief it was to be."
The terse style that characterizes my dad's memoir is never more evident than in
what follows: "My father was later deported to a labor camp at Szent Endre in
Hungary, and I never saw him again."
I don't think I have ever before wondered how this loss and the others - my
dad's first wife and an infant son he never saw died in Auschwitz - affected him
and his relationship to his second family. Had I asked, I don't think he could
have told me.
ISRAELIS don't need to be taught about loss or, indeed, about carrying on
afterwards. They've had a great deal of practice.
Every Memorial Day they mourn and remember, vividly and in great detail, via
television documentaries, radio programs, interviews, lectures, films and plays,
the many thousands felled in Israel's wars and in terror attacks. The day is
crammed with personal stories and reminiscences; as nearly as is possible over
the 24-hour period, the dear dead are personalized by friends and family
members, brought to life again in all their humanity and individuality.
The same happens on Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, observed a
week earlier. The losses are real and enduring; so is the mourning and the
sorrow.
And yet Israelis are noted for the way they pick themselves up and carry on
after tragedy.
Many Jewish survivors of Nazism, some barely out of the camps, made their way
here, fought in Israel's War of Independence and helped build the fledgling
state.
When suicide bombers struck Israeli cities again and again in the mid-2000s,
blowing up cafes, restaurants and shopping malls, the debris would be cleared,
the shattered windows replaced and the establishments opened again for business
almost quicker than anyone could believe possible.
Some said it was too quick, that it was like wiping out the enormity of what had
been perpetrated; but the prevailing sense was that it was right and necessary
to show our enemies and the world - and perhaps ourselves, too - that we
couldn't be beaten down, that no one could for long disrupt the fabric of our
daily lives, that we would go on regardless.
THOSE who have been seared by severe personal loss will never fully heal. How
could they? But they press on, most of them, with a dogged fortitude that seems
distilled from the combined experience of Jewish tragedy throughout the ages.
They live their lives as best they can, despite their loss. What choice do they
have? The only alternative is to lie down, to opt out, to give in and give up.
They must feel the temptation, over and over again, to throw in the towel; but
most of them don't. They square their shoulders and carry on with their lives.
It's what Israelis do.
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July 15, 2009 Wednesday
US Middle East policy: Not as good as it sounds
BYLINE: BARRY RUBIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 945 words
HIGHLIGHT: Whether Israel builds a few thousand apartments in settlements
assumes huge importance because it is the cornerstone of the Obama
administration's plan for quickly settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict - a
success intended to create a grand alliance to stop the spread of Iranian
influence, terrorism and radical Islamism. The Region
A clear US strategy is emerging in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it is a badly
flawed one, as the Obama administration will likely find out over the next six
months. Hopefully, it will make changes as a result.
Let's consider the interrelated policy regarding Iran and the Arab-Israeli
conflict. On Iran, the US plans to build on sanctions, going slowly to keep the
Europeans on board and to win assent from Moscow and other countries. A series
of international conferences, presidential visits and consultations are one arm
of this effort.
The other is a careful attempt to avoid acting in an openly hostile way toward
Teheran. There will be attempts at engagement. Some in the administration think
this might work; others view it simply as a way to show the world that America
has tried and that Iran is intransigent.
Then, the United States will spring its trap! Everything will be ready: allies
coordinated, rationale laid.
And here's where the first problem arrives. European allies, Russia and China
haven't been unwilling to do much because they disliked George W. Bush or
thought Iran hadn't been given ample opportunity to repent. No, they behave the
way they do out of simple self-interest.
European countries don't want a confrontation with Iran. Some are eager for the
profits to be made from trade; others simply think a nuclear-armed Iran can be
managed. As for Russia, it views Iran as an asset. Teheran buys nuclear
equipment and weapons from it, and thus helps subvert US policies. In China's
case, aside from the profit motive, it fears any tough anti-Iran effort could
trigger actions against itself (over human rights, or Taiwan, or Tibet) in the
future.
In other words, no matter how charming Obama is, no matter how many concessions
he makes (or has Israel make) to the Europeans and Russia, no matter how well he
proves himself willing to be friends with Teheran, it will make no difference.
But let's take the best-case outcome. Suppose everyone is ready to agree to some
tougher sanctions. By the time all the compromises are made, the level of
sanctions would be far too low to bother Iran. Moreover, the new Iranian
government is tougher than ever and less inclined not only to doing away with
the drive for nuclear weapons but even to slowing it down.
Obama's rhetoric and overall approach convinces Teheran that the West is weak,
so it can be ignored. And when Iran actually has nukes, who cares what the West
says?
So this Iran policy, though it seems brilliant to its creators, is hopeless.
NOW, LET'S turn to Arab-Israeli conflict policy. Alexander Pope wrote: "A little
learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us
again." In other words, the Obama administration has learned only part of the
truth, and this has made things worse.
What it understands - and, forgive me if I repeat a point I've been pressing for
years - is that most Arab regimes (excluding Iran's little buddy, Syria) are
more worried about Iran and radical Islamist groups than about Israel. So they
have devised a brilliant - in its own mind - plan.
The US will force Israel to freeze construction on existing Jewish settlements
in the West Bank. Using this proof of evenhandedness, it will then go to Arab
regimes and say: "You see, we are ready to push Israel, now will you show your
readiness for peace and press the Palestinian Authority toward compromise?"
Arab rulers will reply - indeed, the Saudis, Egyptians, and Jordanians have
already done so - "not by the hairs on your chinny-chin-chin." Or in more
scientific language: "You get bupkis!" In part, of course, they know Obama isn't
going to huff and puff and blow their houses down. The Iranian regime and their
own people are far scarier.
The minor issue of whether Israel builds a few thousand apartments in
settlements assumes huge importance because it is the cornerstone of Obama's
plan for quickly settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and its success is
intended to make possible a grand alliance that will stop the spread of Iranian
influence, terrorism and radical Islamism. While this is indeed the central
task, sweeping away the old conflict to make it easy isn't going to happen.
THINK OF HOW an alternative might look. On May 27 Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton said: "With respect to settlements, the president was very clear... He
wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not
natural growth exceptions... That is our position. That is what we have
communicated very clearly... And we intend to press that point."
Here's what this approach would sound like if applied to Iran's regime: "With
respect to nuclear weapons and sponsorship of terrorism, the president was very
clear... He wants to see a stop to nuclear weapons - not some nuclear weapons,
not just the warheads, not just the missiles... That is our position. That is
what we have communicated very clearly... And we intend to press that point."
Or how about Syria's regime? "With respect to Syrian sponsorship of terrorism,
the president was very clear... He wants to see a stop to Syrian sponsorship of
terrorism - not just training terrorists, not just financing terrorists, not
just ordering them to attack, not just giving them safe passage across the
border, not just against Lebanon, not just against Iraq, not just against
Israel... That is our position. That is what we have communicated very
clearly... And we intend to press that point."
But of course such a policy would require real toughness against enemies on real
issues, not just empty posturing against an ally on a really small issue.
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'Real mediation'
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 750 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
Javier Solana has had enough. After 10 years as the European Union's foreign
policy chief - and despite all the treasure and energy he has poured into Middle
East peacemaking - the physicist-turned-diplomat is heading into retirement with
Iran on the cusp of an atom bomb, Hamas solidifying its control over Gaza, and
Mahmoud Abbas as recalcitrant as ever.
On July 11, Solana gave a speech to the Ditchley Foundation in London which made
headlines.
Like many diplomats and intellectuals, Solana appears to regard a Palestinian
state - whose establishment under viable terms, it apparently needs stressing,
Israelis support - as some kind of regional cure-all. Reading between the lines,
it's as if he believes that the mullahs in Iran will stop grabbing for regional
hegemony, stealing (rigged) elections, and pursuing nuclear weapons; that Arab
autocrats will guide their polities toward tolerance and representative
government; that Shi'ites and Sunnis will stop blowing each other up; that
Kurds, Copts and Baha'is will gain equality.
The Taliban in Afghanistan will liberate women from their burqas; North Africa's
Islamists will lay down their weapons; al-Qaida will disband. And millions of
restive, alienated Muslims throughout Europe will find a sense of belonging,
allowing tranquility to prevail in the continent's inner cities... If only the
Palestinians had a state.
THE FRAMEWORK for Palestinian statehood Solana referenced in his London speech
included the Clinton Parameters and the Geneva Initiative. Israelis find these,
whatever their imperfections, broadly acceptable as points of departure for
negotiations.
It was on January 7, 2001 that then-president Bill Clinton called for the
creation of a contiguous Palestinian state on most of the West Bank; for the
incorporation of settlement blocs into Israel, and for land swaps as necessary.
Palestinian refugees, he said, could "return" only to a non-militarized
Palestine.
The European-financed Geneva Initiative similarly called for settlement blocs to
be annexed to Israel and for a demilitarized Palestinian state. It also insisted
that a solution to the refugee issue had to be found in "Palestine," not Israel.
Tellingly, Solana chose to ignore the fact that Ehud Olmert, at the end of 2008,
had essentially offered Abbas a turbo-charged version of the Clinton Parameters.
Abbas said no, insisting that Israel pull back to the 1949 Armistice Lines and
permit itself to be demographically smothered by Arab "refugees" in their
millions.
Solana's speech then went off on a tangent about settlements - about how many
more Jews lived in Judea and Samaria today compared to when the Oslo Accords
were signed. Solana knows that were Israel and the Palestinians to agree on
permanent boundaries, settlements situated on the Arab side of the border would,
in all probability, be uprooted. It is the Palestinian propensity for violence
and intransigence that has robbed Israelis of any incentive to abandon the
Jewish heartland.
Solana's fixation with settlements obfuscates and plays to the galleries, but
does not genuinely illuminate why peacemaking has stalled.
Next, he turned to Hamas: "Whether we like it or not, Hamas will have to be part
of the solution." Full stop. Not a word about the Quartet's principles on
recognizing Israel, ending terrorism and abiding by past Palestinian
commitments.
He did offer a circumspect critique of the "binary character - all or nothing"
of the Arab Peace Initiative, which he admitted would have to be "nuanced."
SOLANA THEN offered a way forward toward creating a Palestinian state: "real
mediation." By this, he appeared to mean imposing a solution, and a timetable
for its implementation. If the parties didn't go along, he'd have the UN
Security Council essentially codify the "real mediation" with its imprimatur.
The contrasting reactions to the Solana speech are instructive. The
Palestinians' creative interpretation had Solana calling for the Security
Council to recognize a Palestinian state - in line with their maximalist stance
- by a certain deadline; even if Israel does not.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "We do not object. It's time for the
international community to stop treating Israel as above the laws of man."
The reaction of Israel's Foreign Ministry was that peace had to be built on
negotiations, not imposed.
Plainly, the Palestinians trust that an internationally imposed "peace" would
mostly ignore Israeli concerns, while catering to theirs.
Israelis do not disagree.
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Letters
BYLINE: Michael Plaskow, William Mehlman, Gerry Mandell, T. Wacholder, Chaya
Siegal, Yechiel Aaron, Jack Cohen, M. M. Van Zuiden, M. Brenner
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1173 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Nobel War Prize?
Sir, - Well done, Javier Solana! Your idea that the "UN should adopt a two-state
solution even without agreement" (July 13) is the perfect recipe for a major
Middle East war.
I hope you receive the Nobel War Prize.
MICHAEL PLASKOW
Netanya
Like it or not...
Sir, - "Like it or not" David Horovitz warns us in "Give substance to the
vision" (July 12), "the world's only superpower appears to have decided that
Israel's best interests require it to freeze construction beyond the Green
Line." Ergo, construction must be halted.
If that's the criterion that will be informing our actions, what will we do when
the "world's only superpower" commands, as it inevitably will - in our "best
interests," to be sure - that we deliver half of Jerusalem into the hands of
Fatah? Hey, "like it or not," how can we say no to that irresistible force, even
if it means turning the streets of our capital into a romper room for the Aksa
Martyrs Brigades?
And since its desires must be served ("like it or not"), what do we do when the
"world's only superpower" rejects the validity of all prior understandings
regarding Israel's retention of Gush Etzion, Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel, etc., and
declares that we'd better be ready to put them on the block?
In other words, at what point would Mr. Horovitz draw the line at our
acquiescence in that "superpower's" conception of our "best interests?" French
Hill? Gilo? Jaffa, perhaps?
Unless we're prepared to declare our national sovereignty in Chapter 11 - i.e.,
bankrupt - our response to all those "others bent on making our minds up for us"
should be that no power on earth, including the "world's only superpower" and
its misperceived "interests" is going to persuade us to commit suicide; not even
in measured, sugar-coated installments.
If it is the "Zionist enterprise" Mr. Horovitz is really concerned with, his
message should be: The buck stops here - and now.
WILLIAM MEHLMAN
Jerusalem
Jail tale
Sir, - Is it Purim already? Surely you were joking about the amenities convicted
terrorists enjoy in Israel's prisons ("Limit visits to Hamas inmates,"
Editorial, July 9).
GERRY MANDELL
Omer
We love Shabbat, but
love other Jews more
Sir, - I'm a 19-year-old religious girl and I want all your readers to know that
these destructive, violent people do not represent our opinions ("Haredi
protesters block roads as Shabbat parking feud continues," July 12).
We love Shabbat, but we love other Jews even more, even those who do not keep
Shabbat.
I was very upset to hear about the terrible things that have been going on. Your
readers must think that we hate them, that we want to impose keeping Shabbat on
them. The opposite is the case!
We are commanded to love God, and these misguided people think they can express
their love of God by hurting those whom they see as not doing God's will.
What they are doing is a very big desecration of God's name; many of them have
broken Shabbat themselves and also caused much damage to many religious homes.
T. WACHOLDER
New York
Sir, - I am a haredi woman and I do not support violent protests, even in the
name of Shabbos. The Torah demands civility and courtesy and love of one's
fellow Jews, and this is what I aspire to and what my husband and I teach our
children. We're praying for unity.
CHAYA SIEGAL
Chicago
Worse and worser
Sir, - Which do you think is worse? A few people that we call haredi protesting
on Shabbat, reported in the middle of page 1 of your Sunday paper; or the entire
country being represented - as reported at the top of your front page - by those
sportsmen who beat Russia in Israel on the Sabbath? ("Israel makes tennis
history, smashing Russia to reach Davis Cup semis," July 12.)
YECHIEL AARON
Hashmonaim
Flight of DNA fancy
Sir, - In "The alphabet of life" (July 8), David Klinghoffer starts out by
describing the origin of our understanding of DNA, the molecule of life, but
soon reveals his intention: to find support for "creationism," namely, that God
was responsible for choosing the sequence of bases in DNA that code for specific
genes and biological functions.
In doing so, he reverts to the status quo ante, bringing up the "directed"
evolution proposed by Cuvier before Darwin, now long since rejected, and
selecting one gene (the Hox gene), the function of which is not entirely proven.
His most outrageous jump in subjectivity is to compare the base sequence of DNA
to that of the Hebrew letters in the Kabbala - a totally unsupported fancy.
His main target, and that of all creationists, is that "imagining existence as a
purely material affair, without purpose, as Darwinian evolution still portrays
the matter," is wrong.
However, evolution as Darwin described it is a process, and long after Darwin we
now know that DNA is the "engine" of that process, and that evolution is not
purposeless; it adapts species to their environment by the survival of the
fittest. Further, using DNA sequences, the path of evolution can be derived by
molecular genetics.
What about getting a real scientist to describe how DNA really works instead of
allowing free rein to imaginative creationists with an agenda?
JACK COHEN
Visiting Professor
Hebrew University
Jerusalem
The writer is author (with F. Portugal) of 'A Century of DNA" (1977)
Sir, - David Klinghoffer combines popular science with half-baked Judaism. The
result is a supposedly divinely brewed, primordial alphabet soup I find hard to
digest. At best, his position is wishful thinking, but I would call it an insult
to one's intelligence, if not an outright besmirching of the reputation of Jews
as thinkers and scientists.
His op-ed makes one wonder why, as a Jew, he throws in his lot with the
Intelligent Design crowd if Rabbi Kook already accepted evolution theory.
A returnee to religion myself, I must say the writer makes skeptics come out
right because he does not try to discover anything, but mystifies with a
passion.
Science will eventually find out how DNA began. What I want to know is: Where
does the Intelligent Design movement come from?
M.M. VAN ZUIDEN
Jerusalem
Shoah art & alertness
Sir, - I am a retired physician, a father of seven. I read The Jerusalem Post
and The Jerusalem Report a lot. My wife and I are very worried about the current
US administration's attitude to Israel; I sincerely hope that we are wrong
("Obama to meet Jewish leaders amid concern over criticism directed at Israel,"
July 13).
As a Holocaust survivor, I have tried to keep that nightmare alive so that our
people and our children will remain alert. I have therefore used my free time to
create a series of paintings about what the Nazis did to us. Please view some of
these works on www.holocaustart.net.
I would like to spread the word as much as possible and hope that the leaders of
the State of Israel have the wisdom and courage to do everything possible to
prevent anything like what we went through from ever happening again.
Fanatic dictators don't just make threats. As we recently saw in Iran, they have
no scruples. Given the opportunity, they will carry out their threats.
M. BRENNER, Austin, Texas
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Negotiate about what?
BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 982 words
HIGHLIGHT: Encountering Peace. The writer is the Israel co-CEO of the
Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. www.ipcri.org
At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to meet with him to renew
negotiations. But what would he like to negotiate about? Would he like to
propose another interim agreement? Does he think that we should negotiate the
permanent-status agreement on borders, Jerusalem, refugees? Is the Palestinian
state he spoke about having consensus in Israel the same state the Palestinians
want?
What is it exactly that he would like to discuss with Abbas? Would he like to
propose that the Palestinian leadership ask US President Barack Obama to stop
pressuring Israel on the issue of a settlement freeze? Would he like to ask him
if he would welcome continued Israeli control of the external borders of the
future state of Palestine? Would he like to ask him if it is all right that the
City of David amusement park surrounding the Old City be built on top of homes
in Silwan that are slated for demolition?
Or that the Palestinians should welcome the Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance on
top of Muslim graves in Jerusalem?
Does his agenda also include the construction of homes, hotels and roads in Area
E1 between Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim? Of course, why shouldn't he ask Abbas
to grant a green light for this too - the US has been pressuring Israel on this
issue as well. Why not ask Abbas to tell Hillary Clinton that the Palestinians
have no problem with splitting the West Bank in two?
Of course he could convince him that the really massive building in the
settlements is in Modi'in Illit and Betar Illit, where only haredim are
settling. They are not ideological settlers. They keep to themselves and
besides, moving them to the West Bank means they are moving out of Jerusalem.
Maybe Abbas will understand and sympathize because their natural growth is as
high as the Palestinians - and we really do need to keep a demographic balance
between the two sides.
Maybe he could explain to Abbas that building more homes for Jews in the West
Bank is good for the Palestinians because it creates so many jobs in
construction? Isn't it the dream of every Palestinian youngster to lay floor
tiles in Jewish homes? Isn't this part of the vision of economic peace? When
Palestinians have jobs, they will be too busy to think about making trouble, and
if they have really hard jobs with lots of physical labor, they'll be too tired
to make bombs. So maybe Abbas will understand that building Jewish homes in
settlements is really good for the Palestinians?
Maybe he can explain why even after vacating four settlements in the Jenin area
at the time of the Gaza disengagement, Israel is still in possession of those
settlements. Maybe Abbas will understand why they are closed military areas.
Maybe he will understand why they cannot be turned over to the PA.
Or perhaps Abbas will understand why the Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem
closed by Israel - such as the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce - cannot be
reopened, even though the Road Map requires this.
Perhaps he can convince Abbas that the closing of a poetry festival in east
Jerusalem under the banner of "Jerusalem - Capital of Arab Culture" was a state
security directive? He will surely understand how cultural events such as a film
festival or a folklore dance performance endanger the security of the Jewish
people.
Perhaps he can convince Abbas to recognize all of Jerusalem as the eternal
undivided capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Why shouldn't he
understand that Israel simply cannot imagine its eternal capital without Jebl
Mukaber and Beit Hanina being under its eternal sovereignty. He will surely
recognize that Jerusalem has only been capital to the Jewish people and that it
is the Jewish people's most holy site. Of course he will be willing to renounce
all of the previous claims of the Palestinian people for a capital in east
Jerusalem.
PERHAPS YOU can present a much less controversial subject to begin with. Maybe
Abbas will understand why Israel has to have full control over all the water
resources from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Why shouldn't Abbas
understand that we in Israel are facing a severe water shortage and that
Israelis have to have first priority on the use of that water. Doesn't Israel
use the water more efficiently than anyone else? Palestinians would only waste
the water and they don't know how to manage it as professionally as Israel does.
The head of our water authority is a professor while the head of the Palestinian
water authority is only a doctor.
Perhaps he should invite Avigdor Lieberman to come with him to meet Abbas. With
his strong convictions he could surely convince Abbas that Umm el-Fahm and other
border communities could be a great asset to the Palestinian state, and that he
should convince those Israeli Arabs to give up their citizenship. They don't
really need to be Israeli anyway.
Perhaps he would like to ask Abbas to support another "operation" into Gaza to
finally do away with Hamas. Didn't he support Cast Lead? After that operation
the international community will surely give lots of money to rebuild Gaza, and
all of that money will be under the control of Abbas. Surely he'll jump at that
opportunity.
Maybe he can ask Abbas to convince Bashar Assad to let Israel keep the Golan
Heights and in exchange it will offer Syria full peace. Maybe he can get Abbas
to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to make peace without Israel withdrawing from
the occupied territories. Surely King Abdullah would jump at the opportunity -
he is only waiting for Abbas to ask him.
And Obama really likes the idea of regional peace. Abbas could even receive
another invitation to the White House.
Yes Netanyahu, by all means invite Abbas to meet with you. I am quite sure that
this small sample of a possible agenda is much more modest than any your own
creative imagination can come up with.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: THE GOLAN HEIGHTS. Maybe Netanyahu can ask Abbas to convince
Bashar Assad to let Israel keep the Golan Heights and in exchange Israel will
offer Syria full peace. (Credit: AP)
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July 14, 2009 Tuesday
Syria's hour of triumph
BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1804 words
HIGHLIGHT: Our World
In an interview with Britain's Sky News over the weekend, US President Barack
Obama was asked whether he is planning to accept Syrian President Bashar Assad's
invitation to visit Damascus. The very fact that an American presidential visit
to the Syrian capital is on the international agenda demonstrates how radically
US foreign policy has shifted.
Four years ago, president George W. Bush withdrew the US ambassador from
Damascus following the regime's suspected role in engineering the assassination
of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. Last month
Obama announced that he is returning the US ambassador to Damascus.
Obama's response to the Sky News query was instructive. "There are aspects of
Syrian behavior that trouble us and we think there is a way that Syria can be
much more constructive on a whole host of these issues," he began cautiously.
Then came the zinger: "But as you know, I'm a believer in engagement and my hope
is that we can continue to see progress on that front." By so describing Syria,
Obama acknowledged that it hasn't changed. The Syria he seeks to engage is the
same Syria that Bush decided to isolate. But facts cannot compete with "hope."
Obama is a "believer." He has "hope."
In his move to engage Syria, Obama is enthusiastically joined by France and the
rest of Europe as well as by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Over the past several
months, Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell, French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and dozens of others
have beaten a path to Assad's door. With French President Nicolas Sarkozy
leading the charge, all are agreed that Assad is a man they can do business
with.
But are they right? In the absence of any change in Damascus's behavior, is
there reason to believe that it can be coddled into abandoning its strategic
alliance with Iran? Can it be sweet-talked into ending its support for the
insurgency in Iraq, or arming Hizbullah and sponsoring Hamas? Can Syria be
appeased into ending its nuclear and other nonconventional proliferation
activities? Can it be "engaged" into ending its campaign against the pro-Western
democrats in Lebanon?
To assess the reasonableness of engagement, it is first necessary to analyze the
West's most significant achievements regarding Syria in recent years and
consider their origins. Then, too, it is important to consider how these
achievements are weathering the US's new commitment to engage Damascus as a
strategic partner, and what their current status bodes for the future of the
region.
THE WEST has had two significant achievements regarding Syria in recent years.
The first came in April 2005 with the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon
after a 29-year occupation. The second was Israel's September 6, 2007 attack on
Syria's al-Kibar nuclear installation.
Three events precipitated Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. First there was the
Cedar Revolution in which more than a million Lebanese took to the streets
beginning on March 14, 2005 to demand that Syria withdraw in the wake of the
Hariri assassination. Like the recent revolutionary ferment in Iran, this
outpouring of opposition to Syria showed the West the massive dimensions of
Lebanese yearning for independence. The Bush and Chirac governments responded
with complementary willingness to confront Damascus.
The rare show of Franco-American unity as French president Jacques Chirac joined
forces with the Bush administration to punish Assad for murdering Hariri was the
second cause of Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. On March 25, 2005 the US and
France pushed through UN Security Council Resolution 1695 mandating the
establishment of a UN commission to investigate Hariri's assassination. The
specter of this commission and the investigation that ensued served as a sword
of Damocles pressing ever closer to Assad's throat.
Finally, Syria was convinced to withdraw due to the US's regional deterrent
power. In March 2005 the US's military credibility in the region was at a high
point. In January 8 million Iraqi voters had gone to the polls to vote in the
first free and open elections in that country's history.
The US's message of resolve against Syria was unequivocal. Appearing with
Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir at the White House on March 16, 2005, Bush
said, "United States policy is to work with friends and allies to insist that
Syria completely leave Lebanon, Syria take all her troops out of Lebanon, Syria
take her intelligence services out of Lebanon." There was no wiggle room for
Syria four years ago. There was no appeasement. Assad had one option. He could
withdraw his forces and let the Lebanese be free, or he could risk losing his
regime. He left Lebanon.
UNFORTUNATELY, TODAY this singular achievement is being frittered away. With the
evaporation of Western will to confront it, Syria is moving swiftly to reassert
its control over Lebanon. The West has allowed the Hariri tribunal to fade away.
And today it is effectively supporting Assad as he seeks to determine the
character of the next Lebanese government.
In his speech to the Muslim world last month in Cairo, Obama indicated that the
US no longer objected to Hizbullah or Hamas as political forces when he said,
"America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard
around the world, even if we disagree with them."
After last month's Lebanese elections in which Hizbullah lost to Sa'ad Hariri's
March 14 movement, the administration went a step further. Rather than
capitalize on Hizbullah's defeat by strengthening the victorious pro- democracy
forces, the White House signaled that it preferred the formation of a unity
government with Hizbullah. In a postelection statement, the White House urged
the March 14 bloc to "maintain your power through consent."
Whereas the US has merely hinted its support for the inclusion of Hizbullah in
the next Lebanese government, Europe has embraced the embraced the Iranian proxy
terror group explicitly. France, Britain and the EU have all met with Hizbullah
members since the elections and have enthusiastically thrown their support
behind the Iranian proxy's participation in a "unity" government. Saudi Arabia
has similarly come out in support of such a government.
The US and European embrace of Hizbullah is now enabling Syria to reassert its
control over the Lebanon under the guise of the new era of engagement. Through
its sponsorship of Hizbullah, Syria has become the primary power broker in
Lebanon, even as it is heralded by the likes of Kouchner and Solana for its
supposed noninterference in Lebanese politics.
Bowing to US, European and Saudi pressure to give Hizbullah in coalition
negotiations what it failed to win at the ballot box, Hariri announced shortly
after the election that he supports the establishment of a unity government. In
so doing, he was forced to accept that the fate of his government now rests in
Assad's hands.
With each passing day, it is increasingly clear that Syria means to extract a
high price from Hariri in exchange for Hizbullah's sought-after participation in
his government. Recognizing the trap, Hariri's supporters are calling for him to
form a narrow coalition without Hizbullah and its sister parties. But it is hard
to imagine that either the US or Europe would accept such an outcome.
Were Hariri to form a narrow coalition without Hizbullah, he would expose the
lie of Syrian goodwill and noninterference in Lebanese affairs. And were he to
expose Syria's bad faith, he would demonstrate the folly and danger of the
US-led carnival of engagement. Since this outcome is unacceptable to both Obama
and Sarkozy, who have staked their reputations on appeasing Assad where Bush and
Chirac isolated him, Hariri will likely have no choice but to surrender his
nation's hard earned independence to the same Syrian regime that killed his
father four years ago.
WITH THE WEST now actively assisting Syria in reasserting its hegemony over
Lebanon, the one achievement that remains in place is Israel's successful
removal of the threat of Syria's nuclear program two years ago. But here too,
the powerful legacy of that strike is being frittered away in this new era of
engagement.
Israel's destruction of Syria's al-Kibar nuclear installation demonstrated three
things. First, it revealed that Syria was massively engaged in illicit nuclear
proliferation. Second, it showed that the option of striking illicit nuclear
programs militarily is a viable option. And third, it exposed the strategic
linkages between the Syrian, Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs.
Two years on, due to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's institutional
hostility toward Israel and the US's unwillingness to confront Syria, Damascus
has paid no international price for its rogue nuclear program. Indeed, the main
target of the IAEA's investigations of the al-Kibar facility has been Israel.
The message that UN and US unwillingness to contend with obvious proof of
Syria's criminal behavior is obvious: Would-be proliferators have nothing to
fear from the international community.
The absence of a reconstituted Syrian nuclear program after two years exposes
the central operational lesson of Israel's air strike: Military strikes can be a
very effective tool in preventing rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass
destruction. But rather than internalize this lesson and embrace the deterrent
force it provides the West in dealing with Iran and North Korea, the Obama
administration has squandered it. By slavishly devoting itself to negotiating
with Teheran and Pyongyang, it has removed the West's most effective tool for
blocking nuclear proliferation.
Israel's strike exposed an inconvenient reality to the West. It showed that the
Syrian, Iranian and North Korean programs are part and parcel of the same
program. It is impossible to deal with any one of them in isolation. For two
years, the US and its allies have ignored this truth, preferring to pretend that
these programs are wholly independent entities rather than acknowledge that -
evil or not - a trilateral axis of proliferation among Pyongyang, Teheran and
Damascus is a going concern. As Pyongyang's recent nuclear and ballistic tests
and Iran's recent missile tests all show, the West's refusal to countenance
reality has not made it go away or become less dangerous.
To the contrary, the West's preference for belief in hope and change has made
things more dangerous. By ignoring the achievements of the Bush administration's
policy of isolating and confronting Syria and denying the significance of its
unchanged behavior, Obama and his followers are courting disaster.
The consequences of their squandering hard-won gains for regional security,
freedom and stability will not be long in coming.
caroline@carolineglick.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: FRENCH FOREIGN Minister Bernard Kouchner shares a laugh with his
Syrian counterpart Walid Moallem in Damascus on Sunday. Lebanese Prime Minister
Sa'ad Hariri's supporters are calling for him to form a narrow coalition without
Hizbullah, but neither the US nor Europe is likely to accept that. (Credit: AP)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 14, 2009 Tuesday
Myths about migrant workers
BYLINE: ROY WAGNER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 874 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer lectures at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and
volunteers at worker rights NGO Kav Laoved.
On July 1 the Interior Ministry's new "Oz" unit started deporting migrant
workers. It intends to deport families with children born and raised here, and
force refugees outside the center of the country. It chases workers down in the
streets, day and night. And it justifies what it does with all sorts of lies and
myths. Here are some of these myths.
They take our jobs
Between 1999 and 2000 the number of migrant worker climbed from 187,000 to
214,000, but unemployment went down from 8.9 percent to 8.8%. By the end of
2003, the number of migrant worker dropped to 189,000, but unemployment grew as
high as 10.7%. By 2007 the number of migrant workers went up to 200,000, but
unemployment fell to 7.3%
What does this mean? It means that "migrant workers equal unemployment" is
nothing but populist scapegoating. Migrant workers don't simply take jobs; they
can also generate economic growth. A state whose economy grew while absorbing a
million immigrants from the former Soviet Union (many of them retired or
dependent on welfare and absorption funds) should know that immigration is an
opportunity.
Besides, if the state is really worried about unemployment, how come refugees
are forced north of Hadera and south of Gedera, into the country's main
unemployment hot spots?
They're illegal, and should be deported
Migrant workers aren't illegal. They are made illegal. Here's how it works.
Migrant workers enter the country legally, with the state's invitation, because
they're considered useful for the economy. Brokers charge them anything from a
few thousand dollars to more than $20,000 to come here. This charge is illegal,
but nobody hunts down the brokers and employers.
These migrant workers are then paid less than minimum wage, but no one hunts
down the people who underpay them. Sometimes there's no real job waiting for
them, and sometimes they suffer conditions legally defined as slavery, but only
a handful of cops are charged with catching the offenders.
Underpaid or unemployed, migrant workers can't pay back the loans they took to
come here, so they must find alternative jobs. But working for anyone other than
their registered employer or job broker is considered illegal, despite a
contrary High Court of Justice ruling. At this point enforcement comes in; 200
immigration inspectors are there to hunt them down and deport them.
Migrant workers deported before they manage to repay the debt they took have
their lives ruined. Sometimes they die by the hands of ruthless gray market
lenders.
Deportations are necessary to contain the number of migrant workers
For more than a decade there have been around 200,000 migrant workers. That's
true for years of mass deportations and years of lax enforcement alike. In fact,
even during the peak deportations of 2003, when between 21,000 and 26,000
migrants were deported, 31,000 workers were allowed in legally.
Current deportations are not meant to curb the number of migrant workers. In
fact, the entry of an additional 20,000 workers has just been approved.
Deportations are meant to replace migrant workers already here by new ones, who
bring in more brokerage fees and are easier to exploit.
Deportations are meant to terrorize migrant workers. It's "take what you're
offered, or I'll call the police on you." Migrant workers are forced to give in
to abuse and slavery; the economy grows at their expense, and the race to the
bottom sweeps Israeli workers along, who also have to settle for less.
It's the same in all countries
Only a handful of developed countries exclude all migrant workers from residency
and citizenship. Here a migrant caregiver can be employed legally for 20 years
and still not be entitled to residency. Only one developed country other than
Israel (Singapore) revokes the legal status of migrant workers who give birth. I
know of no developed country other than Israel, where, if two migrant workers
become a couple, one of them will lose his or her legal status.
The Knesset has endorsed the first reading of a bill, which sentences any person
who as much as gives a glass of water to a refugee to 20 years in prison. Italy
has just attempted to pass a similar, although much less draconian law. But in
Italy public outcry and common sense thwarted the threat of imprisonment.
Where's our public outcry and common sense?
Deportation inspectors treat migrant workers humanely
Deportation inspectors treat migrant workers as disposable tools. But migrant
workers are human beings, and human beings aren't disposable. If they're
necessary for our economy, then they deserve to reap what they sow. They deserve
to work here long enough to repay their debts and make money, and the few who
wish to do so deserve to integrate into our communities. If the country refuses
to integrate them, it shouldn't invite them in the first place.
The government states that it is concerned with maintaining Israel's Jewish
character. But I can't see what manhunts, deportations and treating humans as
disposable tools has to do with Jewish values, culture or history.
Today at 16:00, at the Armored Corps Memorial in Latrun, the deportation unit is
having its public launch. Just outside, activists will launch their struggle
against the oppressive deportation policy. Pick your side.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: A SUDANESE ASYLUM-SEEKER in Eilat shows his identity papers.
(Credit: Ariel Zirulnick)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 14, 2009 Tuesday
Mobile in the South
BYLINE: DAVID NEWMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 875 words
HIGHLIGHT: The extension of the Trans-Israel Highway (Route 6) makes the car
journey from Beersheba to the center of the country little more than a short
commute. The writer is professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University
and editor of the international journal Geopolitics.
For two hours this week, the focus was on Beersheba, as the cabinet held its
weekly meeting in the capital of the Negev. Students at Ben-Gurion University
could be forgiven for thinking this was intended to mark the end of the academic
year, almost a month after all the other universities finished their studies.
The reason for the late finish is the longer-term effects of the Gaza war,
during which the university was shut down for fear of missile attacks - some
actually fell not far from the complex. By the time studies got back to normal,
it was too late to try to cram so many additional lectures into the existing
time frame and the academic year was put back a month.
Once the academic year in Beersheba comes to an end, the campus empties out.
Most of its 17,000 students are not local residents and are only too eager to
return north until the next academic year. The bright lights of Tel Aviv and
Haifa are more attractive - the night life, the job opportunities and the sea -
and nothing that Beersheba does is able to hold more than a small percentage of
the students. Come to campus on a Thursday afternoon and there is a line of
buses waiting for students who walk straight out of their end-of-week classes,
onto the bus and back home for the weekend.
THE IMPACT of the university on the surrounding neighborhood is significant.
Many students live in renovated apartments in the city's poorest neighborhoods.
A large percentage are involved in Perach and other social assistance plans, in
which they contribute knowledge and skills to disadvantaged families and
children with learning problems, and in return part of their tuition fees are
covered. The economic impact of 17,000 students, faculty and administrative
staff cannot be overstated, and the university is the second largest employer in
town.
And yet despite the international standing of its university and the Soroka
Medical Center, the headquarters of major industrial concerns such as the Dead
Sea Works, Machteshim and other chemical plants, Beersheba retains its negative
image as a place for transience. Last week, the university held graduation
ceremonies for the thousands of students who finished their degrees a year ago.
The roads into Beersheba from the north were momentarily crowded as the students
and their families came back to visit the city where they had spent upwards of
three years.
PLANNERS USED to believe that easier accessibility to peripheral regions, where
land and housing is cheaper, would bring new populations. But the vastly
improved transportation links to the city have had only a limited impact. The
rehabilitated train service enables you to travel from the heart of Beersheba to
the heart of Tel Aviv in a little over an hour, or to Haifa (on a good day) in
just over two hours. The extension of the Trans-Israel Highway (Route 6) as far
south as Beit Kama has made the car journey to the center of the country little
more than a short commute.
But ironically this has created a situation where an increasing number of people
who hold down high-power jobs in the South now opt to commute into Beersheba on
a daily basis while continuing to reside in Herzliya and Kfar Shmaryahu. After
all, what's an hour's commute in global terms?
In its early days, the university insisted that all faculty reside within the
Beersheba region. There was a time when faculty's home address and the school
registration of their children would be checked before tenure was awarded. But
this demand was eventually found to be unlawful. There is now an attempt to
enforce a rule which demands faculty be present on campus five days a week -
even if they arrive every morning by helicopter from Kiryat Shmona. This too
will be almost impossible to enforce, given the fact that for many - especially
in the humanities and social sciences - the real research laboratories are to be
found in the libraries and archives of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while the best
conditions for writing books and research articles are usually the comfort and
silence of their homes, well away from the tumult and cramped conditions of the
university corridors.
The opportunities exist: a university and hospital of international caliber,
relatively cheap land for suburban development. A tourist who has not visited
this part of the country for a long time would not recognize the development
which has taken place during the past two decades. Three of the country's
highest quality middle-class residential communities - Omer, Meitar and Lehavim
- where many of the university and hospital staff reside and where land prices
are but a fraction of those in the center of the country, are just a 15-minute
drive from the city. And yet the negative image remains.
It will take a lot more than a two-hour visit of the cabinet to change that
image. A new, young mayor, a local resident, may yet change what previous
incumbents have failed to do. But images - especially self-images - are strong
and it will require a lot of hard work and economic investment to influence the
thousands of bright graduates that their long-term future beckons them south -
what David Ben-Gurion failed to do, despite his own personal example of going to
live in Sde Boker, no one else has yet succeeded in doing.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: BEN GURION University campus. Most of its 17,000 students are
not local residents. (Credit: Dani Machlis)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 14, 2009 Tuesday
When Zionism is portrayed as fascism
BYLINE: DAN ILLOUZ
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 837 words
HIGHLIGHT: Right of Reply. The Im Tirtzu organization has repeatedly requested
that its accusers provide even one example of fascist behavior; none has been
forthcoming. The writer is the overseas communications coordinator of Im Tirtzu
and is currently completing his law degree at Hebrew University.
A video examining the Im Tirtzu organization recently appeared on the home page
of The Jerusalem Post Web site, with the provocative title, "Is Im Tirtzu about
National Pride or Fascism?" In the video, a Hebrew University student is filmed
stating, "They say it [Im Tirtzu's ideology] is national pride; we think it's
fascism."
The charge that Im Tirtzu, an extra-parliamentary group dedicated to
strengthening the spirit of Zionism within Israel, is a fascist organization is
not new. It has been hurled time and time again by elements opposed to Im
Tirtzu's success. Instead of grappling with the issues Im Tirtzu presents, these
people prefer to limit their responses to a simplistic accusations.
While I can accept that people will disagree with some of Im Tirtzu's actions, I
cannot accept people who delegitimize the organization on the basis of myths
rather than facts. In that spirit, I want to examine what they call "fascism."
DURING OPERATION Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, some students gathered at the
university to protest the IDF operation. Their slogans included phrases such as
"Hamas, Hamas, keep bombing Sderot" and "With might and blood, we'll redeem you,
O Palestine." Im Tirtzu organized a counterprotest in support of the soldiers
fighting to protect residents of the South. This led some to describe Im
Tirtzu's actions as fascist. Counter-demonstrating against a protest that uses
such virulent slogans is not fascist but Zionist.
Similarly, when Im Tirtzu, in the context of the recent student council
elections, danced with Israeli flags around Hebrew University as they sang
traditional, uplifting songs like "Am Yisrael Chai," some students thought it
accurate to compare this to a Nazi parade and hailed the dancers with a Hitler
salute.
FOLLOWING IM TIRTZU's significant gains in the elections, it demanded the
establishment of a committee monitoring the editorial policy of the student
newspaper to ensure that all points of views were represented equally. Once
again, we were accused of fascism. This charge was hinted at in the
aforementioned video. Yet the editorial committee is to be made up of members of
every party that ran in the elections, and is meant to replace the reality in
which editorial policy was left to the sole discretion of the editor-in-chief.
The previous editor-in-chief had often promoted positions extremely critical of
Israel, felt by many to border on anti-Zionisim. The previous editor also
recently admitted to using the newspaper to promote his views, claiming that no
editor can be completely objective. Im Tirtzu requested that two pages be
dedicated each week to opinion pieces, and that those pieces be divided equally
between left- and right-wing positions. Ensuring that a plurality of views is
represented in a student newspaper is not fascist; in fact, it promotes Israel
as a truly democratic, Zionist state.
YES, WE do support IDF soldiers. Yes, we do work tirelessly toward the release
of Gilad Schalit. Yes, we do proudly identify with the flag of the State of
Israel. Yes, we do ask that activities organized by Hebrew University's student
council end with the singing of "Hatikva." No, these policies do not make us
fascists. These policies make us Zionist.
I have often tried to understand why Im Tirzu is accused of fascism. Im Tirtzu
has many times asked those who characterize it as such to give just one example
in which it has acted in a fascist manner. Of course, none has ever been
supplied. Instead, the charge is simply repeated over and over again.
At the end of the day, in equating Im Tirtzu with fascism, our accusers are
really equating Zionism with fascism. It should be obvious now why they would
feel threatened by an organization aiming to reinvigorate the spirit of Zionism
within Israel.
The preamble to the constitution of Hebrew University begins: "Whereas in
pursuance of the Zionist aspiration of the Jewish people, the Hebrew University
was established in Jerusalem in 1925..." Im Tirtzu has been working tirelessly
over the past few years to ensure that this aspiration not be forgotten. It has
been working tirelessly to ensure that Hebrew University, which has served as
such a powerful symbol of Zionism, should not become a symbol of post- Zionism
and anti-Zionism. It has been working tirelessly to bring that Zionist
aspiration to new heights by making the Israeli population - on university
campuses and beyond - once again believe in its ideals and values.
After 2,000 years of dreaming, the Jewish nation finally answered the call of
one of its leaders who said: "If you will it (im tirtzu), it is not a dream."
One hundred years after this sentence was uttered by Theodor Herzl in
Altneuland, we can see with our eyes how these words have inspired the Jewish
people to accomplish what wasn't thought impossible. We at Im Tirtzu believe
that if we only dare to keep willing, we can transform the dream that is the
State of Israel into an even more just, more modern, more democratic and more
Jewish place.
tzipiyah@gmail.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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The Jerusalem Post
July 13, 2009 Monday
Out of Africa
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 711 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
In the American ideal, leaders who cling to power through deceit and the
silencing of dissent are on the wrong side of history, to paraphrase a line from
President Barack Obama's inaugural address.
This was essentially the message Obama brought with him as he and his family
spent a day over the weekend in Ghana.
The president is of Kenyan descent on his father's side; the First Lady is the
great-great-granddaughter of a slave.
In Ghana, the couple and their daughters, Sasha, eight, and Malia, 11, passed
through the "Door of No Return" at Cape Coast Castle, where African slaves were
"warehoused" in dungeons, sometimes for weeks on end, before being shipped to a
life of bondage in the New World. Obama said the 17th-century fortress was
"reminiscent of the trip that I took to Buchenwald. It reminds us of the
capacity of human beings to commit great evil."
Though the White House kept the itinerary of the visit low-key, thousands of
Ghanaians, many wearing souvenir T- shirts and waving American flags, lined the
streets and crowded on rooftops to catch a glimpse of Obama.
Ghana was selected for the visit because it is one of the few stable democracies
on the continent.
Obama met with President John Atta Mills and addressed parliamentarians and
dignitaries at Accra's convention center, saying: "We must start from the simple
premise that Africa's future is up to AfricansÉ The West is not responsible for
the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which
children are enlisted as combatants."
He drew applause when he added: "No business wants to invest in a place where
the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority
is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way
to the rule of brutality and bribery."
OBAMA returned to the US just as delegates of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were gathering in Manhattan to mark the
group's centenary. An impetus for the NAACP's founding was the revulsion
liberals felt toward the vile practice of lynching; another was shock over the
anti-black rampages in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908.
The NAACP's founders and early activists included legendary African Americans,
among them W.E.B. Du Bois, joined by socially committed Jews, including Henry
Moscowitz, Joel Spingarn, Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Emil G. Hirsch and
Stephen Wise.
Over the years, Jews also contributed to some of the key legal victories
achieved by the civil rights movement. For instance, Jack Greenberg assisted
Thurgood Marshall in the watershed US Supreme Court case of Brown v. the Board
of Education of Topeka, and succeeded him as counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense
and Educational Fund.
When the black power movement achieved ascendancy in the 1960s-1970s, and
violent Jew-hatred became a regular occurrence in urban America, what divided
Jews and blacks became stronger than that which united them. The two communities
were further driven apart because Jews mostly opposed racial preferences in
employment (affirmative action) - even to compensate for institutionalized
discrimination.
Meanwhile, the NAACP went through a period of racial chauvinism, reaching its
nadir with the brief appointment, in April 1993, of Ben Chavis as executive
director. He was and remains a follower of the notorious hater Louis Farrakhan.
TO A welcome and remarkable extent, tensions between African Americans and Jews
have receded in the 21st century. It seemed only natural that Obama should
receive 78 percent of the Jewish vote, and that two of the president's closets
aides would be Jewish.
Today's NAACP, led by Benjamin Todd Jealous, has recommitted to the values of
its founders: "We are from our origin a multiracial, multiethnic human rights
organization."
And so long as prejudice, sometimes spilling over into outright hate, remains
intrinsic to human nature there will be work for advocates of civil rights.
The US civil rights movement and our Zionist enterprise, 6,000 miles away, share
a passion for the Promised Land. For Zionists, it is a tangible place; for
African Americans it is more of an destination. As both secure their hard-won
achievements, they need to strive to remain faithful to their founders' ideals.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 13, 2009 Monday
A combined day of commemoration for the victims of Nazism and communism?
BYLINE: EFRAIM ZUROFF
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 959 words
HIGHLIGHT: Baltic leaders consistently repeat the historically inaccurate mantra
that communist crimes were genocidal. The writer is director of the Israel
office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
As hard as this may be to believe, it is entirely possible that in a few years,
Europe will no longer set aside a special day to commemorate the Holocaust.
Instead, Europeans will mark August 23, the day of the 1939 Molotov- Ribbentrop
nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which paved the
way for the German and Russian invasions of Poland, as a day of commemoration
for the victims of Nazism and communism.
Given the enormous increase during the past decade in Holocaust awareness and
education, such a prediction might sound very unlikely, but if the campaign
being currently waged by Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, with support from other
post-communist countries, to equate communism with Nazism succeeds, that will be
only one of many very problematic changes in the manner in which Europeans
relate to the annihilation of European Jewry.
PERHAPS THE MOST disturbing aspect of the problem is the virtually total
ignorance and apathy of Israel and the Jewish world in response to this
campaign, which has been conducted for well over a decade and has recently been
upgraded with very worrying results. Only last week, for example, the
Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe) which met in Vilnius, Lithuania passed a resolution calling for the
establishment of August 23 as a day of commemoration for the victims of
communism and Nazism, with the only opposition registered by Russia and a few
European communists.
The truth is that in this regard, the handwriting has been on the wall
practically from the renewal of Baltic independence. Since 1991, in meetings
with senior Baltic officials, in response to our demands that they acknowledge
the extensive scope of Baltic collaboration in Nazi crimes, prosecute local Nazi
war criminals and rewrite the history textbooks to accurately reflect this
reality, they always tried to divert the discussion to their suffering under the
Russian occupation and the role of Jewish communists in Soviet crimes.
Thus it was hardly surprising that in when these governments decided to
establish historical commissions to investigate the crimes suffered during their
occupation, they insisted, despite protests from the Wiesenthal Center and other
groups, on combining the research on local Holocaust crimes with that on
communist crimes in one unified body.
Another related phenomenon was that Baltic leaders consistently repeated the
historically inaccurate mantra that communist crimes were genocidal. I will
never forget my meeting in Vilnius in the early 1990s with Vytautas Landsbergis,
then Lithuanian head of state, who in response to my gift of a volume on
Holocaust research, reciprocated with a book on the mass deportations of
Lithuanians to Siberia, which he referred to as "our Holocaust."
Add the total failure of the Baltics to prosecute local Nazi war criminals, the
efforts to divert almost exclusive blame for the murders to the Germans and
Austrians, and the establishment of genocide or occupation museums which which
totally ignore local Holocaust crimes and Nazi collaboration, and the pattern
becomes crystal clear.
About two years ago, emboldened by the failure of the European Union, the United
States, Israel and the Jewish world to hold the Baltics accountable in a
meaningful manner for their manifold failures in dealing with Holocaust issues
(prosecution, restitution, documentation, etc.), these governments intensified
their campaign to create official symmetry between communism and Nazism.
THEIR FIRST major success was the June 3, 2008 "Prague Declaration on European
Conscience and Communism" signed by Vaclev Havel and numerous members of the
European Parliament, which called for the establishment of August 23 as an
official day of remembrance for Nazi and communist victims "in the same way
Europe remembers the victims of the Holocaust on January 27, as well as an
"Institute of European Memory and Conscience" to serve as a museum, research,
and educational center on these crimes. The rationale presented for these steps
points to the "substantial similarities between Nazism and communism" and warns
that "Europe will not be united unless it is able to reunite its history [and]
recognize communism and Nazism as a common legacy."
While one can sympathize with the legitimate desire of the victims of communism
for recognition, there is nothing innocent about this declaration which clearly
seeks to undermine the current status of the Holocaust as a unique historical
tragedy and relativize it to divert attention from the extensive collaboration
of Balts with the Nazis and the abysmal failure of all their governments since
independence to adequately deal with these issues.
On September 23, 2008, more than 400 members of the European Parliament signed a
declaration supporting the establishment of August 23 as "European Day of
Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism" and on April 2, 2009, a
resolution similar to the Prague Declaration passed in the same body by a vote
of 533-44 with 33 abstentions. A month ago, however, when I asked the members of
the Israeli global forum on anti-Semitism whether anyone had heard of the Prague
Declaration, not a single member responded positively.
It is clear that the time has come to start paying attention to this insidious
campaign being conducted primarily by Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to alleviate
their guilt for Holocaust crimes and displace the Shoah from its unique status.
If not, we are likely to soon find ourselves facing the cancellation of the
numerous important achievements of the past decade in Holocaust commemoration
and education and forced to fight an uphill battle against a new and distorted
World War II historical narrative.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: THE SOVIET Union and Nazi Germany sign the Molotov- Ribbentrop
Pact on August 23 1939, paving the way for the Russian and German invasions of
Poland.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 13, 2009 Monday
How divorce scars children
BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1002 words
HIGHLIGHT: NO HOLDS BARRED. You become a cynic who believes that life is made up
of pieces of a puzzle that don't ultimately fit. The writer's most recent book
on marriage is The Kosher Sutra. He is the founder of This World: The Values
Network.
I've just returned from filming a family travel program in Iceland. Among other
things, the island nation is interesting because not many people marry. They
couple, have kids and when they get bored, move to another relationship. And
just when you thought that was becoming the norm throughout the Western world,
along comes a Time magazine cover story about the importance of marriage and the
destructive nature of infidelity and divorce.
Divorce is so common that it rarely ever makes news. Marriages are so bad that
we seldom raise an eyebrow to the endless stream of cheating politicians -
nearly always men - who are exposed in sickening spectacles. The worst of the
lot, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, was even stupid enough to refer to his
mistress as his "soul mate" and then, just when you thought his foot could not
go any deeper down his esophagus, said that he was "trying to fall in love"
again with his wife again.
That a governor who runs an entire state knows so little about himself and
cannot distinguish between infatuation and true love, that he could be so
utterly juvenile as to believe that an illicit affair based on wild sex and hot
nights in Buenos Aires is the equivalent of the deep commitment given to you by
the wife who took your last name and is raising your four sons speaks volumes
about the almost incurable shallowness and immaturity being exhibited by today's
men.
And no, I do not believe that couples ought to stay together for the sake of the
children. Marriage is not a prison sentence and your children are not your
jailers. But that does not mean that divorce does not scar kids.
THIS WEEK I was on The Today Show where we did a full half hour on how divorce
affects teens. I was eight years old when my parents divorced, and it scarred me
so deeply that I thought I would never fully recover. While I have been able to
work through its issues over the years, it has in fact left a lasting impact on
the person I have become and is the principal reason that I have endeavored so
much in the field of human relationships, trying to figure out how to keep a man
and woman happily under the same roof for the duration of their lives. I was
always puzzled at how so many of my friends, whose parents were divorced, were
either neutral on the topic or actually happy that their parents divorced,
thinking that everyone was better off.
But how could children not be scarred by divorce? The people whose love is
responsible for your very existence have now drifted apart, rendering a big
question mark on your life. You become a cynic who believes that life is made up
of pieces of a puzzle that don't ultimately fit. You begin to question the whole
notion of love. Love is the glue that keeps a man and woman together, but you
never saw it function. So you begin to question if there is such a thing as
lifelong commitment. No wonder then that children of divorce statistically have
a 50 percent higher rate of divorce themselves.
You also become a caregiver to your parents instead of the other way around.
Children and teenagers need parents to raise them. But when you witness your
parents nursing such deep wounds as they fight and argue and divorce, you feel
the need to take care of them and ease their pain, putting you in an unnatural
situation. It is almost as if you are the adult in the home now.
You become a yo-yo, going from household to household, never really knowing
where home is. Your innocence is compromised. Children have natural attachments
to parents, but now you have to be more diplomatic about how much you display
toward each. You don't want to hurt your mother by showing her you're closer to
your father, or vice versa. You become calculating in how you show affection.
YOU NOW have to contend with all sorts of strangers coming into your life - your
mother starts dating men, your father starts dating women. You don't know how to
relate to them. On the one hand you want to be accepting of them because you
want to see your parents happy. On the other hand, you're not looking for a
surrogate mom or dad, seeing as you already love your parents.
Divorce also undermines parental discipline. So often when parents divorce the
children become their principal source of affection, and nobody's going to bite
the hand that feeds them. Parents aren't going to say no to children whom they
are so dependent on for love.
Divorce also pushes teens to confide in friends rather than parents. The
children question why their parents were incapable of working out their
differences, why they were relegated to arguing and screaming at each other.
When children see their parents in this way they begin to question their
judgment. They then choose to go to their friends for wisdom and advice because
they hold a degree of anger toward their parents. So it becomes a situation of
the blind leading the blind, teenagers doling out advice to one another in place
of their wiser, more experienced parents.
Once a friend who was in a very unhappy marriage called me up and told me she
was making a party to celebrate her divorce. I told her that I could not attend
as I would never celebrate divorce. She got angry at me and told me that she
expected me to be happy for her. I proceeded to tell her that there are three
areas of life: the good, the bad and the necessary. Divorce is never good, it is
usually bad, but it is sometimes necessary. It's like war. You sometimes have to
fight a war but it's not something you celebrate. I was happy that she was no
longer in pain. The marriage had to end. But something sacred had still been
lost.
During the presidential campaign last year, I strongly advocated that the major
candidates embrace as part of their platform a marital counseling tax deductible
as an incentive for married couples to get the help they need. Marriage is not
perfect. But no institution for the preservation of human love, the sustaining
of affectionate commitment, or safeguarding the welfare of children has ever
been devised.
www.shmuley.com
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GRAPHIC: Photo: REALTOR TRACEY Guttes places a for-sale sign in the front yard
of a house in Austin, Texas. Children of divorce go back and forth from
household to household, never really knowing where home is. (Credit: Bloomberg)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 13, 2009 Monday
Letters
BYLINE: Sally Shaw, Gish Truman Robbins, Jerry Aviram, Moshe Shields, M. Veeder,
Gershon Harris, C. Hoffman, David S. Addleman, David Gilad, Jerusalem Post staff
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1150 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
What a win!
Sir, - What a great two days for Israeli tennis! It was wonderful to watch the
uninhibited reaction of both spectators and players in the unfamiliar venue of
the Nokia Arena. Congratulations to all concerned. I wish I could have been
there, even though Channel 55 gave excellent coverage ("Israel crushes Russia,
makes history," July 12).
SALLY SHAW
Kfar Saba
What a sportswoman!
Sir, - Steve Linde conferred accolades on male Jewish athletes through the
years, ignoring the many achievements of their female counterparts ("Go, Jason!
A Maccabiah message for us all," Steve Linde, July 10).
I could name many, but will suffice with a wonderful human being whom I have the
honor to call a friend.
Angela Buxton (b.1934), a top-ranked player for Great Britain in the 1950s,
overcame pervasive anti-Semitism in the elite tennis world to become the sole
Jewish woman in history to win at Wimbledon. Denied membership in premier tennis
clubs and rejected by other British tennis players, she found a kindred spirit
in African American player Althea Gibson. Together they became one of the
greatest duos in tennis history, winning the women's doubles at Wimbledon in
1956.
Buxton went on to win the French Open doubles with Gibson in 1956; she won the
Maccabiah singles title in 1953 and 1957, as well as the English indoor and
London Grass Court singles championship. She also played an important role in
founding the Israel Tennis Center under the enduring leadership of its
president, Dr. Ian Froman.
GISH TRUMAN ROBBINS
Pardesiya
Wrong target
Sir, - Asher Meir's contention is misplaced ("Unfair water rates hurt us all,"
July 10).
Israeli agriculture is not responsible for our water shortage. On the contrary,
not only is it probably the most efficient in the world in water use efficiency,
nearly 70 percent of the water used by agriculture in Israel is recycled water,
not fit for home use.
Nor is agriculture the main water consumer in Israel; over the past decades, the
urban and industrial sectors have consumed most of the potable water in the
country.
As to price, most modern countries - with the exception of the few blessed with
unlimited fresh water resources - subsidize water used in agriculture, whether
by the massive construction of dams, reservoirs and canals, as in the American
West, or via massive subsidies.
Israel subsidizes water for agriculture because agriculture is vital to our
economy, not because it is just another "interest group."
JERRY AVIRAM
Tel Aviv
'Haredi' jokers
Sir, - As a rabbi in a wonderful Modern Orthodox school, I distance myself from
the terrible behavior of these so-called haredi protesters ("Haredi protesters
block roads as Shabbat parking feud continues," July 12).
So many Jews stay away from further Torah observance when they see these jokers
turn Orthodoxy into an ugly representation of what humanity should be.
I hope this condemnation will remind the world that the vast majority of
Orthodoxy is sickened by this behavior.
MOSHE SHIELDS
Olney, Maryland
Sir, - Your letters column of July 9 carried 15 letters denying the legitimacy
and effectiveness of these riots ("Orthodox readers react strongly to the haredi
rioting in Jerusalem"). Twelve of the letters - 80 percent - were from writers
outside Israel.
Is this a true representation of the proportion of letters you received? Does it
demonstrate the lack of interest, or backbone, in the local Orthodox or haredi
communities?
M. VEEDER
Netanya
Sir, - Would that haredi rabbis here heeded Rabbi Yakov Horowitz's courageous
advice and condemnation of these violent Sabbath demonstrations, a terrible
desecration of God's name perpetrated by so-called "zealots" for the Jewish
faith ("American rabbi urges haredi leaders to condemn violence in Jerusalem,"
July 8).
I vividly recall the Lubavitcher Rebbe's outspoken praise for the IDF as the
messengers of God's miracle of the Entebbe rescue in 1976. In a landmark radio
address emphasizing the miraculous nature of that world-inspiring event, Menahem
Mendel Shneerson declared that should any of the freed hostages ever have
occasion to return to the Entebbe airport, they needed to recite a special, rare
blessing thanking God for having "performed a miracle for me in this place."
His position totally contradicted the full-page ad in The New York Times taken
out by members of the Satmar hassidic sect and others declaring the Entebbe
rescue operation "the work of the devil" because of the wanton desecration of
the Sabbath involved and the fact that it was performed by the evil Zionist
State of Israel!
The extremists took their zealotry to the streets, including throwing all kinds
of debris at the Rebbe's house in Brooklyn.
Sound familiar?
GERSHON HARRIS
Hatzor Haglilit
Sir, - I'd like to add my voice to the thousands of Orthodox Jews who condemn
the haredi hooligans who have thrown rocks and diapers, spat in people's faces
and burned garbage cans over the past few weeks. As a hasidic Jew, it pains me
that this is the new face of haredi Judaism.
The excuse that these atrocities are done by "fringe" haredi groups has been put
into great doubt when leaders of the Edah Haharedis not only did not condemn the
violence, but also visited these arrested criminals, thereby providing
legitimacy for their horrible deeds.
Although the desecration of Shabbos by secular Jews is painful, it is much more
excruciating when so-called religious Jews engage in such horrific behavior. It
is my hope that Jerusalem Mayor Barakat will not offer positive reinforcement by
giving in to the Edah.
C. HOFFMAN
Brooklyn, New York
'Normal' belligerency
Sir, - So Syria's foreign minister wants the Golan "on a gold platter," claiming
"it's our land and to have it back is the most normal thing in the world"?
When the Syrians did have the Golan, "normality" for them was to launch rockets
and fire bullets down at the Israeli kibbutzim, and on fishermen in the
Kinneret, and to divert resources from the Kinneret in an attempt to deny Israel
its main source of water.
Is there any reason to believe Syria would behave differently today?
My advice to Mr. Moallem is: Don't hold your breath! ("Syria's Moallem: We want
Golan on a gold platter," July 8).
DAVID S. ADDLEMAN
Mevaseret Zion
More precisely
Sir, - Gershon Baskin ought to consider a more appropriate mantra than "It's the
occupation, stupid!" (July 7) in defining the one issue preventing real progress
toward a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
An obvious suggestion that comes to mind is: "It's the right of return, stupid!"
DAVID GILAD
Beersheba
CORRECTION
The report by the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute , ed to in "30% of haredi teens
- hidden dropouts" (July 9) dealt with the hidden dropout rate among junior high
and high school students nationwide, and not with the hidden dropout rate in
haredi schools.
Haredi dropout rates were extrapolated from the nationwide figures by ASHELIM,
an arm of the JDC.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 13, 2009 Monday
Hoping the next 100 days go better
BYLINE: CHUCK FREILICH
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 680 words
HIGHLIGHT: Netanyahu's delaying tactics on the two-state solution meant he lost
on all levels. The writer, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel,
is now a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He
is completing a book on national security decision making in Israel.
Binyamin Netanyahu is a lucky man: He got a second chance as prime minister, a
rarity for national leaders.
To his credit, Netanyahu does at times stake out tough and unpopular positions,
but correct ones, nonetheless. During his first term (1996-99), he insisted, as
a condition for further progress, that the Palestinians finally put an end to
terrorism and unequivocally amend the Palestinian Covenant's call for Israel's
destruction. He was right, even if his motives were disingenuous.
Today, too, the conditions he set out for a two-state solution are essential.
The Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized - security is Israel's
rightful demand in exchange for territory. And the Palestinians do finally have
to come to terms with Israel's existence as the nation state of the Jewish
people, the reality that the "right of return" will be limited to the future
Palestine and that some territorial changes will have to be made. Their ongoing
refusal to do so, after 60 years, speaks volumes.
But so, too, does Netanyahu's pigheaded recalcitrance to recognize that the
two-state solution, with whatever variations, is the only one which is both
feasible and which preserves Israel's fundamental character as a state.
It would have been one thing had he truly opposed the two-state solution - a
policy difference that people can genuinely disagree over. But his delaying
tactics meant he lost on all levels: he was forced to back down, once again
demonstrating poor judgment and weak leadership, and he caused serious harm
before doing so.
FIRST, HE needlessly convinced the entire world that it is Israel, not the
Palestinians, which opposes a two- state solution. In fact, long before
independence, beginning with the first attempts to partition Palestine by the
British Peel Commission in 1937 and the UN in 1947, Israel has always been in
favor, the Arabs opposed. Yasser Arafat rejected Ehud Barak's dramatic proposals
at Camp David and even the Clinton parameters, in which Israel agreed to a
Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank, with a 1%-2%
land swap. Mahmoud Abbas rejected Ehud Olmert's offer of 93.5% of the West Bank,
with a complete land swap. Hamas rejects any agreement with Israel, and a de
facto two-state solution already exists (Gaza and the West Bank).
The simple truth, that if Israel were to offer the Palestinians 100% of their
demands, there would be no one capable of both accepting and delivering on this,
was lost to international opinion. Netanyahu played tough, failed and delivered
a severe blow to Israel's international standing.
Second, it was Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who first
created the dangerous and fallacious link between progress on the peace process
and efforts to end Iran's nuclear program, which Israel considers an existential
threat. Israel has an overwhelming interest in effective American efforts to end
the threat, independently of any and all other considerations. Was it worthwhile
making the two-state solution a source of contention, or was the linkage created
deeply injurious?
Third, it was clear from day one that Obama intended to reach out to the Arab
world and attempt a breakthrough toward peace. Netanyahu, who professes to
"understand American," should have done everything in his power to align himself
with the new administration's agenda. Instead, his obstinacy led to a glaring
crack in relations with the US, a cardinal pillar of Israeli national security,
and exposed an unprecedented degree of mutual alienation.
Netanyahu, understandably, does not want a domestic political crisis over the
peace process, especially this early in his tenure, and in the end he avoided
one. No coalition in decades, however, has survived for more than three years
and his will fare no better. The crisis will come. Hopefully he will handle it
better.
Convincing the world that Israel is the obstacle to peace, a destructive link
between Iran's nukes and the peace process, an emerging rift with the United
States - not bad for the first 100 days. I cannot wait for the next.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 13, 2009 Monday
Buckling under pressure
BYLINE: JEFF BARAK
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 914 words
HIGHLIGHT: Prime ministers have zigzagged before, but the better ones did so for
reasons of belief and not political expediency. REALITY CHECK. The writer is a
former editor- in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
At last week's cabinet meeting which marked this government's first 100 days in
office, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu moaned: "I cannot say that they were
100 days of grace. I am not sure that we had even one day of grace." Self-pity
is an unattractive quality, and it is especially unappealing in a leader.
Netanyahu was not elected so that he could put his feet up on his desk, enjoy a
Cuban cigar and simply bask in the adulation of his voters.
In fact, those who voted for him must be pretty disappointed in Netanyahu's
second stint in office. For starters, the prime minister has consistently broken
all his campaign promises. Although he repeatedly stated he wanted a national
unity government, he refused to share power with Kadima leader Tzipi Livni and
form a true Likud- Kadima-Labor-Shas national unity government.
Having broken that promise, Netanyahu then failed to carry out his pledge to
revert to his standby option of forming a right-wing coalition, instead
preferring to entice the Labor Party to sell its soul by offering it cabinet
posts it did not deserve. The great exponent of small government ended up with
the largest administration in the country's history - and at a time when the
message he should have sent out was one of the need to tighten one's belt.
This failure to rein in costs became a familiar motif in the budget discussions.
As finance minister under Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu proved he knew how to slash
budgets and stand up to Shas over child allotments. As prime minister, he meekly
crumbled, paying off Shas and giving in to Histadrut chief Ofer Eini's every
demand. Last week's farce and zigzag over exempting fruit and vegetables from
VAT was simply further proof that this is a prime minister who buckles under
pressure.
And when under pressure, Netanyahu panics. Spooked by unflattering profiles of
his first 100 days and Kadima's assault on his record, Netanyahu ordered his top
advisers - his ministers were too sensible to play along - to face the media in
a hastily convened press conference in the Knesset to sing the government's
praises. If not a case of life imitating art, this was certainly a case of Bibi
imitating Polishuk.
Like the TV character Polishuk, Netanyahu is not in charge of his office. His
failure to prevent damaging leaks, such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy's
undiplomatic (if understandable) comments about Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, and the general atmosphere of chaos, are reminiscent of Netanyahu's
first term in office.
BUT FOR Netanyahu's ideological supporters, it gets worse. At last week's
cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also said: "We have brought a national agreement on
the idea of 'two states for two peoples.'" My memory might fail me at times, but
I don't think this was the slogan Netanyahu campaigned on. Indeed, there are
those in the Likud looking to convene the party's central committee to reject
this dramatic policy turnaround.
On the one hand, one has to rejoice in Netanyahu's official acceptance, a decade
or so too late it must be said, of the idea of territorial compromise to reach a
peace agreement with Palestinians. The prime minister's speech at Bar-Ilan
University now binds him to the principle of partitioning the Land of Israel.
At the same time, the preconditions Netanyahu has laid down for recognizing
Palestinian statehood are such that there is more than a question mark hovering
over the sincerity of his conversion to the idea of "two states for two
peoples." To insist, as he told the cabinet, that "first of all" the
Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which "means that the
problem of the refugees will be resolved outside the State of Israel," is a case
of putting the cart before the horse. No one can expect the Palestinians to give
up one of their central demands before negotiations begin.
LOOKING BACK over Netanyahu's first 100 days, it is hard to avoid the impression
that what interests the prime minister is solely his survival in office and not
ideology. Prime ministers have zigzagged before, but the better ones did so for
reasons of belief and not political expediency.
Ariel Sharon's conversion from "the fate of Netzarim is the fate of Tel Aviv" to
dismantling Netzarim and the rest of the Jewish settlements in Gaza stemmed from
his eventual understanding that the settlers' presence there was untenable.
Menachem Begin's decision to return Sinai to Egypt was based on his realization
that peace with Egypt was more important than the Israeli flag flying in Sharm
e- Sheikh.
What does Netanyahu believe in? Before the elections one could have comfortably
ticked off the following items: a free market, lower taxes, small government and
no to a Palestinian state. Within 100 days he has restored the Histadrut to a
position of power it has not held in decades, raised taxes, introduced a bloated
government and signed up to Palestinian statehood.
And he has accomplished all this by undermining his senior ministers such as
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, once his closest ally, and Foreign Minister
Lieberman, his senior coalition partner, who to all intents and purposes has
been replaced by Ehud Barak.
Meanwhile, the two major problems facing Israel - Iran and Israel's relations
with Washington - are no nearer being solved than they were when Netanyahu took
office. It will take more than the government's planned PR campaign to persuade
a skeptical public that, to borrow an old election slogan, "Bibi is good for the
Jews."
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The Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2009 Sunday
What about the Jewish refugees from Arab lands?
BYLINE: NOAM SCHIMMEL
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 632 words
HIGHLIGHT: Their losses must be made an issue of paramount concern in any future
peace negotiations. The writer is a former intern with the Office of the
Prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He was a Dorot
Fellow in Israel in 2006 - 2007.
There is a troubling silence here and in the global Jewish community, in the
context of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, about the fate of those Middle
Eastern Jews who were persecuted, stripped of their citizenship and expelled
from their homes and in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.
Whatever might be the final settlement with the Palestinians and with individual
Arab countries or with all the member states of the Arab League and the
Organization of the Islamic Conference, the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab
lands, the violation of their human rights, confiscation of their property and
annulment of their citizenship must be addressed.
There is virtually no discussion in the European and North American press and
public about the history of discrimination against the Jews of Arab lands, which
culminated in mass violence and expulsion. It is time for this history to be
vigorously raised by Israel and made an issue of paramount concern in any future
peace negotiations.
A cynic might argue that the massive loss of land, property and savings of the
Jewish refugees from Arab lands can simply be used to "offset" the losses of
Palestinians. This would be wrong. The losses were qualitatively and
quantitatively different. Each took place in its own context, and needs to be
addressed on its own merits.
UNFORTUNATELY, ISRAEL set a bad precedent in its peace treaty with Egypt when it
made no significant demands to compensate Egyptian Jews who had been stripped of
their citizenship from the 1940s through the 1960s,. Many of these lost their
property and savings . But this error can be rectified at the negotiating table
for the Jews of other Arab countries, particularly because Israel has no peace
treaty or diplomatic relations with the nations from which the bulk of Israel's
Mizrahi immigrants fled: Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Morocco. The
time to press the rights and history of the Jews of Arab lands is now, as peace
negotiations are initiated.
Even if raising this issue during negotiations is met with unyielding negative
responses, Israel must nevertheless maintain a principled stance in pressing for
acknowledgment and compensation. It is imperative that the historical record,
which has until now been largely ignored, receives the attention it deserves.
Already one Arab country has indicated a willingness to restore the rights of
former Jewish citizens and provide compensation for some of their losses. In
November 2008 the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa, said he would
restore citizenship to Bahraini Jews and provide them with land. He met with 50
Bahraini Jews in New York and said to them: "It's open, it's your country." He
has set a positive example which should be recognized.
ISRAEL MAY ultimately decide that only a minimal acknowledgment of the
persecution of Jews in Arab lands and symbolic compensation for their losses
will be necessary in the context of a peace treaty with one or many of the Arab
states. That is a decision to be made in the context of negotiations and on the
basis of the long-term interests and preferences of Israel's citizens, taking
into account the opinions of the former Jewish refugees.
But not addressing the topic at all, or addressing it only tangentially and
superficially, does a terrible disservice to those who lost so much when they
immigrated to Israel. The least they deserve is an honest, comprehensive and
public accounting of their experiences, and an acknowledgment that their rights
were egregiously violated, so that creating the conditions for peace based on
justice requires the Arab world to acknowledge and address these human rights
violations and the theft of property, savings and land.
Until now Israel has permitted a shameful silence on the issue. That silence
must finally be broken.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2009 Sunday
Managing anti-Semitism in Germany
BYLINE: HENRYK M. BRODER and BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1304 words
HIGHLIGHT: Three short-term remedies that could breathe some life and fire into
fighting the disease. Henryk M. Broder is one of Germany's leading commentators
and writes for Der Spiegel. Benjamin Weinthal is The Jerusalem Post
correspondent in Germany.
One of the biggest achievements of political correctness in the Federal Republic
of Germany is that there is a "representative" or "commissioner" for everything.
There is a "commissioner for the armed forces" in the Bundestag (Lower House of
Parliament) to whom soldiers can complain about long hours and bad food, a
"federal drug commissioner" who wants to convince children to give up smoking,
binge-drinking and the excessive use of computer games, and a "federal
government representative for patient interests" at the Ministry of Health from
whom we almost never hear anything.
Every large company has an "addiction issues representative" who takes care of
employees addicted to alcohol or drugs, and there is an "equal opportunity
commissioner" at every German college who ensures that women are not at a
disadvantage. It is very fashionable for companies and institutions to have an
"environmental issues manager." There is even a "commission for environmental
questions" for the Protestant regional churches in Germany, and it won't be long
before the Catholics follow their lead.
In this way an entirely new profession has been born, along the lines of
"bankruptcy trustee" and "event manager" - another niche in post-industrial
society where people who have no idea what else they could do establish
themselves.
There have been discussions about an "anti-Semitism representative" since
November 9, 2008 (the 70th anniversary of the Krystalnacht pogroms), when the
Bundestag called on the federal government to convene a panel of experts to
compile an annual "anti-Semitism report" combined with recommendations on how to
come to grips with anti-Semitism. All the parliamentary parties agreed (which is
quite rare) that a committee "of scientists and practitioners" was necessary.
Of course they did not consider the fact that they must first agree on what
constitutes anti-Semitism.
NOW SOME representatives are mad at the government because so much time has
passed and nothing has been done. Green Party MP Jerzy Montag (and chairman of
the German- Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group) no longer believes that such
a committee will be established before the upcoming elections. Left Party MP
Petra Pau has even called it a "disregard" for the German parliament and
"ignorance in the light of a major social problem."
These reactions are typical of a conviction, widely held in Germany, that a
committee must be established in order to gain control of any problem. The
"scientists and practitioners" will then take care of everything else.
Government representatives like Montag and Pau don't even notice that they
themselves are standing in the way of understanding and fighting anti-Semitism.
Montag quite innocently asked during a hearing of experts in the Bundestag's
Committee on Internal Affairs whether there could be such a thing as "pure"
anti-Zionism uncontaminated by anti-Semitism.
Pau's understanding of anti-Semitism is just as limited. She likes to travel to
Jerusalem for anti-Semitism symposiums, but doesn't say a word when there are
discussions within her own party about Israel's right to exist, since those
discussions are not considered anti- Semitic but merely anti-Zionist.
Some of Pau's fellow party members have no problem taking part in pro-Hizbullah
demonstrations or calling for a political and economic boycott of Israel - none
of that counts as anti-Semitism. In Germany, distancing oneself from the classic
anti-Semitism of the Nazis is a basic prerequisite before one can act as an
anti-Zionist without arousing suspicion of being a common anti-Semite who has
merely changed shirts. Establishing an anti-Semitism representative will not
change anything. On the contrary, the government would merely be giving its
blessing to these bogus claims of innocence.
There is a central paradox at the core of fighting anti-Semitism in
post-Holocaust Germany. On the one hand, the German parliament passes
resolutions pledging to combat anti-Semitism, and forms an anti-Semitism
commission. Politicians lament that anti-Semitism has again "arrived in
mainstream society." Morally charged admonitions such as "Never Again Auschwitz"
and "stop it before it has a chance to start" are part and parcel of the German
anti-anti- Semitism strategy.
ON THE OTHER HAND, anti-Semitism remains a faceless, nebulous concept that
allegedly serves to silence criticism of Israel. Wolfgang Benz, director of the
Berlin Center for Anti-Semitism Research, which advises the German government in
formulating policies to fight Jew-hatred, asserted that the allegation of
anti-Semitism is as dangerous as anti- Semitism itself. Referring to the
accusation of anti- Semitism, Benz said: "In Germany it has become the
discussion killer, in order to shut people up."
Benz and his colleagues at the publicly funded Center are reticent about calling
those who hate Jews anti- Semites, and have resigned themselves to managing
anti- Semitism and investigating Jews as if they are laboratory hamsters exposed
to different forms of anti-Semitism. Yet by "managing" anti-Semitism, Benz has
mismanaged it and, bizarrely, contributed to the staying power of modern Jew-
hatred. The Berlin Center seems to believe that if you do not subscribe to the
anti-Semitic worldview of Hitler's inner circle, then you are not anti-Semitic.
Unfortunately, the Center simply reflects the limitations of mainstream thinking
in modern Germany.
While there is strong civil resistance to the fragmented and largely impotent
extreme right-wing groups that propagate Nazi-based racial anti-Semitism, there
is hardly a bleep of resistance when widespread anti-Semitism is dressed up as
ostensibly respectable criticism of Israel.
Many German foundations and media have perfected a tried-and-true method to
avoid the charge of anti-Semitism - namely, subcontract the job to anti-Israel
Jews like Jeff Halper in Israel, Alfred Grosser in France and Norman Finkelstein
or Tony Judt in the US, although they articulate views that might meet the
European Union's working definition of anti-Semitism. The Jewish origin of these
so-called "Israel critics" is believed to insulate journalists, editors and NGOs
from the accusation of stoking anti-Semitism.
What cannot be done directly is thus accomplished indirectly, and there is no
shortage of subcontractors available. A recent telling example is the decision
to award Halper the "Immanuel Kant world citizen prize" in May for his efforts
to reconcile Jews and Palestinians. Halper told the Badische Zeitung, a local
newspaper in Freiburg where he accepted the award, that "I am a Jewish Israeli
and, nevertheless, I say that Hamas should not recognize Israel. You cannot
expect from the Palestinians that they support Zionism." Continuing along these
lines, Halper characterized Israel as a terror state.
THERE ARE three short-term remedies that could breathe some life and fire into
fighting anti-Semitism in Germany:
* Academics, journalists, NGOs and politicians should attach a human face to
modern anti-Semitism (anti- Israelism);
* The myth that the accusation of anti-Semitism is as lethal as anti-Semitism
itself ought to be dismissed for the nonsense it is;
* And insulating oneself against the charge of anti- Semitism by employing
hard-core anti-Zionist Jews should be recognized as a mixture of cowardice and
anti-Semitism.
Wallowing in meaningless resolutions and a fluffy anti-Semitism parliamentary
commission represents the path of least resistance; it means managing
anti-Semitism instead of confronting it when it comes disguised as criticism of
Israel.
Anti-Semitism is a disease in society, as is anti- Zionism. Both phenomena fall
under the authority of the federal government's representative for patient
interests, and that position has already been filled. He just needs to become
more active.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE GERMAN Parliament building. All the parties agreed that it
was necessary to establish a committee 'of scientists and practitioners' to
fight anti-Semitism, but they failed to provide a modern definition of the term.
(Credit: Bloomberg)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2009 Sunday
The price of water
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 696 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
In a matter of days, the government will probably be reaching even more deeply
into our pockets by charging much more for that most basic commodity - water.
The Knesset Finance Committee last week approved what is popularly dubbed the
"Drought Tax." The new levy is slated to be speedily approved in the Knesset
this week. It becomes effective on Wednesday.
The Israel Water Authority claims that up until now, we have paid so little for
the water in our taps that we have wasted it and taken it for granted - in total
disregard of the fact that we live not only in an arid region but in one that is
getting alarmingly drier.
The following math may a bit numbing, but the bottom line is clear.
A cubic meter of water has, thus far, cost an ordinary Israeli household just
NIS 4.18 for the first 8 cm. a month; NIS 5.7 for the next 7 cm., and NIS 7.9
for anything above that. Low rates will now apply only to a basic ration.
Whatever exceeds it, will cost NIS 28 per cm. - effectively a NIS 20 fine.
The basic allowance per household of up to four members will be a monthly 16 cm.
Until November 1, each additional person per household will be allowed 4.2 cm.
extra at the basic rate. Between November and January, the basic ration will
rise to 18 cm., with each additional household member beyond four getting 5 cm.
more.
From next January, the basic household definition will be lowered to two persons
and the entitlement to 12 cm. A three-member household will get a 15 cm. base,
with 5 cm. per each additional person.
Granted, not all families would necessarily suffer. Many don't exceed the basic
allowance.
We said it was complicated. But recent surveys show that 71 percent of us have
no idea how much water we consume, and 82% don't know what we pay. If the
drought tax achieves nothing more than increased awareness, it will constitute a
bonus.
HOWEVER, it's doubtful much else would appreciably improve. The time-lag between
when water is used and when it's paid for is considerable - even longer than for
most other utilities. So the mental link between action and consequence is
stretched. Will higher bimonthly bills generate the desired psychological
effect? Arguable.
A further difficulty arises from the fact that this is a tax which could prove
exceptionally difficult to collect. It will be paid via the municipalities, but
local authorities generally possess no statistics on the numbers of residents
per household. The tax is almost immediately applicable, whereas the necessary
data cannot be obtained in time.
Then comes the sad fact that household water savings cannot ameliorate the
enormous shortage created by nearly a decade of low precipitation during which
several governments failed utterly to add necessary desalination facilities.
Those under construction now will only alleviate the situation from 2014 on -
assuming everything proceeds on schedule.
It would be altogether more effective to cut negligent waste. A whopping 164
million cm. are lost annually because of substandard municipal equipment or
leakages from corroded city pipelines.
The drought tax is expected to save 80 million cm., assuming expectations are
fully met. Odds are they won't be, but that the drought tax will become a
permanent fixture.
The only good news on the water front is preparations (only on the drawing-board
so far) by Tel Aviv and its Dan Region satellites to desalinate their own water.
Their efforts won't be trouble-free because the national government won't easily
acquiesce, a fact to which Rishon Lezion can attest. Its efforts to put up a
small independent desalination plant have been frustrated for years.
There's no justification for such cavalier obstructionism; we all pay the price
for senseless red tape. Although the Tel Aviv local initiative is regrettably
nowhere near operational, it has our full endorsement. It's certainly the way to
go.
What government bureaucracy and wrongheaded penny- pinching has frustrated for
all too many years may be facilitated by private entrepreneurship and local
enterprise. Nothing but good can come from decreasing central government
control, especially when it has been far from successful in addressing this
ongoing crisis.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2009 Sunday
Letters
BYLINE: Jacob Mendlovic, The Zolty Family, Melanie Coffman, Rabbi Leonard
Oberstein, Allan Katz, Helen Levenston, Rabbi Jacob Chinitz, Colin L. Leci,
Sharon Altshul
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1159 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Praise the good
Sir, - I share the outrage of Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, whose student, requesting
information for a paper he was writing, was rebuffed by a professor from Ireland
observing an academic boycott of Israel ("Do not call me," July 8).
As one who monitored the Irish press during Israel's war in Gaza, I noticed that
Ireland was one of Europe's most hostile countries toward Israel.
That said, I was surprised and delighted by prominent Irish who defended Israel
vigorously. As hakarat hatov - appreciating the good that someone does you - is
a Jewish imperative, let us recognize them:
David Adams, columnist for the Irish Times; Bruce Arnold, Ruth Dudley Edwards,
Kevin Myers, Ian O'Doherty and David Quinn, columnists for the Irish
Independent; Tom Carew, chair, Ireland-Israel Friendship League, and Sean
Gannon, chairman, Irish Friends of Israel.
JACOB MENDLOVIC
Toronto
Respect for all...
Sir, - We are religious haredim raised with a profound respect for every single
Jew, no matter what his/her stripe or color. We were deeply dismayed by the
photo of a haredi hooligan ("Orthodox readers react strongly to haredi violence
in Jerusalem," Letters, July 9).
This person does not represent mainstream haredi values, and we disassociate
ourselves from him and his ilk.
We and just about all the haredim we know educate our children to interact
nicely and respectfully with every person, Jew or non-Jew, religious or secular,
young or old, man or woman.
THE ZOLTY FAMILY
Toronto
Sir, - I passionately support Rabbi Yakov Horowitz's campaign to speak out
against the violent hooligans in haredi garb who falsely represent the haredi
community to the public ("American rabbi urges haredi leaders to condemn
violence in Jerusalem," July 8).
In my early twenties, I chose to join this community of peace-loving, dedicated
and warm people. It's a good thing I didn't have my eye on the media then, or I
might have gotten the mistaken idea that the community condones violence and
hatred.
Please stop splashing these people's photos across the paper as if they
represent us! Or at least mention that they are aberrations of a community that
rejects them as its spokespeople.
MELANIE COFFMAN
Jerusalem
...equals respect
for the Creator
Sir, - I concur with Rabbi Yakov Horowitz in rejecting the intolerable behavior
of a small group of hooligans who wear religious garb.
People who spit on reporters, throw rocks, and call other Jews "Nazis" are
miscreants who defile the image of the Creator in whose image we are made. They
should be spat out of their communities, and every religious institution should
make clear that these tactics are not those of anyone steeped in Judaism.
RABBI LEONARD OBERSTEIN
Baltimore
Sir, - I want it to be clear that using violence in a protest is anti-Torah.
These people do not represent my concern that Shabbat not become Saturday.
Focusing media coverage on a fringe element of the religious community presents
a distorted picture of religious Jews in Israel, the vast majority of whom are
law-abiding, caring and responsible citizens.
ALLAN KATZ
Petah Tikva
Saying this, doing that
Sir, - Marchal Kaplan's protest at a criminal yeshiva student being identified
as haredi (Letters, July 8) is missing the point.
The haredim, unlike other communities, profess the only legitimate claim to a
morally guided Judaism. The term for people who preach one thing and do another
is "hypocrites." That is why they should be identified.
HELEN LEVENSTON
Jerusalem
The case for
patrilineality
Sir, - I know Raymond Apple and respect his vast knowledge, as evidenced in
"Matrilineality is still best for Jewish identity" (July 8). However, I must
disagree with his conclusion.
First of all, even he admits that the idea of following identity through the
mother was not original Halacha, but a historical development. If so, we are
entitled to allow other and new historical considerations to be looked at.
Jewish identity can be either spiritual, via conversion, or by birth, having
Jewish parents.
If we are prepared to grant Jewish status to the convert, without biological
inheritance, and if we grant Jewish identity to the child of Jewish parents who
knows nothing and observes nothing of Judaism, how can we reject the Jewishness
of the child of a Jewish father? The biological element is there, and the
religious observance of the child is never an issue in Halacha.
Shall we argue, as Rabbi Apple does, that maternity is certain and paternity
always uncertain? And if so, how can we call the son of a Kohen a Kohen, if we
are not certain this son came from this father? And what if we are not certain
that the mother is really the mother - if there were no witnesses to the actual
birth?
Hence it seems to me that the child of a father who claims to be Jewish -Êand to
be his or her father - should be accepted as a Jew. If the fact of a gentile
father does not disqualify the child, why should the fact of a gentile mother?
RABBI JACOB CHINITZ
Jerusalem
Water: Our life blood
Sir, - Man requires three basic, naturally occurring substances for survival:
air, food and water. Once these have been supplied, we also need security.
However, the news that the Water Authority and Finance Ministry will penalize
the domestic user with a hefty drought levy - going into effect when the budget
is passed - is beyond belief.
Looking at the major public road infrastructure recently constructed and still
under construction, one must ask: Why has it taken priority over the water
supply? The cost of these road projects must be substantially more than the
total cost of desalination plants to supply the population with a sufficient,
sustainable, adequate water supply. It would appear that the road construction
contractors, petrol suppliers and car importers are driving the issue for their
financial benefit.
One need only go back to the mid 1960s, when the US president proposed we have
nuclear desalination plants to provide adequate desalinated water, to realize
how successive governments have failed on this issue over the last 45 years,
preferring to cover the country in a mass of concrete.
How many desalination plants could be built for the cost of purchasing one F-35
stealth fighter plane?
In the early 1960s, we had water rationing in places like Jerusalem. Today,
water is wasted in washing cars, with the used water running down the city
drains, when it could be recycled to prevent our greenery drying up.
We have to change our priorities immediately - but not with such financial
penalties ("MKs: Changes proposed - drought levy," June 26).
COLIN L. LECI
Jerusalem
Free and easy
Sir - "Take VIPs to Hadassah" is so true! (Letters, July 9). Last Wednesday
night, as I was leaving Hadassah Ein Karem hospital, two Muslim women were
entering - one wearing a full black burqa with only thin slits for her eyes.
All I could think was: "Where is Jimmy Carter now?" Where else in the Middle
East could two women on their own move around so freely?
SHARON ALTSHUL
Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Post
July 12, 2009 Sunday
Giving Israel a sporting chance
BYLINE: Liat Collins
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1030 words
HIGHLIGHT: The arrival of planeloads of participants in the Maccabiah Games and
new immigrants on Nefesh B'Nefesh flights is a timely reminder of what makes
this country special. MY WORD. First published in the International Edition of
July 10, 2009.
You'll never guess what grew in our community garden: love. Last week I
participated in a special sheva brachot for a bride and groom who met through
their involvement in the community gardens project and fittingly held one of the
post-nuptial celebrations in our little park, where we sat on the ground and
sang Hebrew songs. It was about as Israeli a scene as you can get - a group of
hevre singing Ehud Manor by moonlight. The relationship between El-Or Levy and
Mor Noy, who worked as madrichim (counselors) for the Society for the Protection
of Nature in Israel and the International Cultural & Community Council program,
was not love at first sight. It was one of those seeds that grew where you
didn't expect it, resulting in a particularly precious flower.
Mor is from Sasa, a secular kibbutz on the Lebanese border founded by North
American members of the Hashomer Hatza'ir youth movement in 1949, when the word
"settler" was considered positive. El-Or grew up in Dolev, a religious community
in Samaria of the type which apparently requires the whole world's permission to
continue to flourish.
"Mixed marriages" between religious and secular are not common in today's
increasingly divisive society. Their marriage carries with it a message of hope
for the future. We are still one people.
I thought of Mor and El-Or after the party in the park when I saw news footage
of immigrants arriving from North America on a Nefesh B'Nefesh flight last week,
just some of the 3,000 expected to come this summer. The sight of Zeev Shamdalov
from Chicago kissing the ground at Ben-Gurion Airport is also something that can
be seen only in Israel.
The emotional high of the immigrants will undoubtedly recede, but they will
probably never quite get over how special life here can be. Living as a Jew in
the Jewish homeland (whether you are religious, secular or somewhere in between)
is not the same as living as a Jew in the Diaspora.
That's something the new immigrants already realize. And thousands of special
visitors - 5,000 in fact - will also become aware of it in the next couple of
weeks as they take part in the Maccabiah Games, nicknamed "The Jewish Olympics."
This Maccabiah, the 18th (or "hai" - "life" - in Hebrew), has attracted an
excellent turnout numerically; altogether with the Israelis there are 7,000
participants, and if it doesn't make sporting history, well, that's not really
the point. When it comes to the Maccabiah, the saying that participation is more
important than winning is not just a cliche - it's a truism.
The Maccabiah is more a means of fostering Jewish continuity and identity than
sporting achievement - even though it can boast "a pool" of talent. It gave the
world its first glimpse of swimming superstar Mark Spitz, a 15- year-old
champion of the 1965 games. And one of this year's noteworthy competitors is
Jason Lezak, a three-time Olympic gold medalist from the US who is making a
splash on his first trip to Israel.
The 1965 Maccabiah also brought basketball player Tal Brody from the US to
Israel for the first time. Brody later immigrated and became a local legend,
particularly after he so quotably pointed out in his strong American accent
following Maccabi Tel Aviv's big win against CSKA Moscow in 1977: "Anahnu al
hamapa ve'anahnu nisharim al hamapa!" (We're on the map and we're staying on the
map!).
Many immigrant sportsmen (and -women) have made Israel proud, including pole
vaulter Alex Averbuch and kayaker Michael Kalganov, each in their own way
expressing that same sentiment.
The Maccabiah is a family affair and the Diaspora competitors, immigrant
Israelis and Sabras are united by more than their love of sport. The competitive
spirit contains an element of sibling rivalry.
BEING PROUD participants in the Maccabiah is about Jewish pride as well as the
sporting spirit. And where else but at the opening ceremony of the "Jewish
Olympics" could a basketball coach, like Todd Schayes, carry a banner reading
(in Hebrew): "Single American male looking for Israeli wife. Staying at the
Hilton Hotel, TA"?
Bypassing the hotel switchboard which crashed from the calls, I interviewed
Schayes in 2001, a few days after his well-publicized entrance, and discussed
how he planned to sift through the details of more than 3,000 girls - and quite
a few Jewish mothers.
The Maccabiah, like the Olympics, has not all been fun and games. The history of
the Olympics has been marked by very inglorious moments. The lowest point of the
modern Olympics was the attack by Palestinian terrorists on the Israeli athletes
at Munich in 1972, which left 11 of the country's top sportsmen and coaches
dead. It was this attack that first made me really aware of the link between
Israel and Jews, setting me on the path to aliya.
The Maccabiah's worst episode was when the Israeli "Trust me" mentality resulted
in the deaths of four Australians and injured more than 70 when the bridge over
the Yarkon River collapsed during the 1997 opening ceremony. In a symbolic act
of closure, Josh Small - who was seven when his father, Greg, died in the
accident - is participating this year on Australia's tenpin bowling team, where
his father had been a top player.
The 2001 games nearly didn't go on when Palestinian terror attacks left
potential participants nervous - especially in the wake of the Dolphinarium
discotheque bombing in Tel Aviv (which killed 21 young people) less than a month
before the opening. Fortunately, the foreign teams realized that they had too
much to lose by letting the terrorists triumph.
This year's games are taking place under the shadow of the economic crisis,
making the substantial donation by Jamie McCourt, president and CEO of the Los
Angeles Dodgers and another Maccabiah VIP, all the more significant.
Interestingly, the financial meltdown is playing a role in encouraging many of
the new immigrants arriving this summer from "wealthy" countries. They are
discovering that life in Israel has a great deal to offer - and there's more to
life than money and the rat race.
We wish "mazal tov" to all Maccabiah participants, new immigrants and newly-weds
building their lives here. Give it a sporting chance and you can't lose.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: JEWISH AGENCY Chairman Natan Sharansky and Co-Founder and
Chairman of Nefesh B'Nefesh Tony Gelbart welcome 232 new immigrants from North
America last week. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
Mailbag
BYLINE: Eli Minoff, Larry Zieden
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 31
LENGTH: 522 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers are invited to send responses to Readers'
Lettersmetro@jpost.com Please provide your name and place of residence.
Can I live in a haredi neighborhood?
Re: Neighborhood rights and wrongs (July 3)
Dear editor,
The haredi community claims it has the same right as any other group to live
where it wants and to enjoy the religious lifestyle that they are accustomed to.
Are they aware of the fact that a coin has two sides? As a secular couple, do my
wife and I have the same right to live in a haredi community and enjoy the
secular lifestyle that we are accustomed to? Fat chance! They will torch my car,
throw stones through my windows, spit on us and if nothing else gets us to move
out then they will resort to outright violence against us.
There is only one solution to this problem, which is slowly destroying the soul
of our country. To accommodate the growing numbers of the haredi population we
should build closed, ghetto style cities and suburban neighborhoods in secular
cities all around the country where the haredi community can settle and live the
way they wish to live, thereby disconnecting themselves altogether from the
secular majority.
On the bottom line, this is the only way that the two opposing philosophies will
be able to coexist without violence.
I hope that it will not take bloodshed and rage before our government realizes
that this is the only real solution.
Eli Minoff,
Safed
Israeli driver education IS the problem
Re: Don't Drive me Crazy! (June 19)
Dear editor,
Throughout the years, all the initiatives by government, organizations and
advocates have failed to improve the Israeli driver and reduce road accidents
and traffic violations. The catastrophic situation worsens with each passing
year.
That's because it's a lost cause. All the required courses, fines, revoking of
licenses and even prison terms will not transform a long-term driver's dangerous
habits.
The driving skills learned by new drivers define their driving habits throughout
their lives. They are unchangeable. The poor driving starts right at the
beginning when our kids begin their driving lessons. The driver education system
as taught by the "lamed" instructors is poorly run. The emphasis is being put on
instructing "how to operate" a vehicle and not "how to drive safely." The
antiquated "lameds" are an old-boy network who just sit back, talk on their cell
phones, direct the student to turn left or right, and look for the next paying
customer. Whatever curriculum they may have is totally ineffective.
When each of my kids turned 17, I sent them to the US to learn driving skills
and get a license. I'm aware this opportunity is not available to all, but the
kids came back with a solid foundation of safe driving skills, which they
continue to practice.
I watch as they give the right of way to vehicles and pedestrians, they observe
other drivers and anticipate all actions. They get the big picture. When the
kids go out with friends, for peace of mind, I prefer they drive and not let
their friends drive.
Let's deal with the cause, in addition to the result. Driver education reform is
the answer before our future drivers just turn into copies of today's drivers.
As in life, education and skills are the key to success.
Larry Zieden, Hod Hasharon
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The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: Jessica Fischer, Alisa Majer, Jacob Chinitz, Ester & Hanoch Zeitlin,
Lynette Ordman, J Sklan, Meir Persoff, Zohar Aloufi, Ruth Binstock (Goldstein)
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 1206 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
This should be taught
Sir, Gil Troy should know that the Ministry of Education and Culture printed a
truly wonderful book for resource material in English entitled Landmarks
(editor, Avi Tsur, 1998). Now if someone would only translate the book into
Hebrew and make sure every teacher in every school used it in the classroom,
we'd have kids growing up knowing their history and developing a sense of
nationalism and patriotism that is woefully lacking in our materialistic,
hedonistic society ("This July 4, Israelis and Americans should celebrate our
past," July 3).
JESSICA FISCHER
Michmoret
Tevye knew to draw the line
Sir, Daniel Gordis gets it right when he says that Israel is judged by double
standards. But "It's a new world, Bibi" (July 3) is inaccurate.
With rare exceptions, it has always been the general rule that when it comes to
Jews (today, Israel) the rules do not apply! That is why, though I did like the
comparison with Tevye, the one that came to my mind was a rather different one:
When Tevye's first daughter wants to marry the tailor, Tevye weighs the pros and
cons. "On the one hand... on the other hand...." He does the same with his
second daughter, who wants to marry a communist Jewish boy; but when it comes to
the third daughter, who wants to marry a Russian gentile, he stops. "There is no
other hand," he says, drawing the line.
That is maybe what Israel lacks we do not clearly draw our lines but instead
let other, foreign governments dictate our behavior.
A healthy "Thank you, but we don't tell you how to deal with your foreign
minister, please don't tell us how to deal with ours" etc., to those governments
would probably get us much further as regards our interests than mumbling about
"new-old times."
ALISA MAJER
Ra'anana
Why curse and misrepresent
Sir, I am furious. David Forman's vicious attack on Binyamin Netanyahu could
have been written with relish by a Hamas agent ("The new adventures of old
Bibi," July 3). Instead of focusing on the adamant refusal of the moderate West
Bank leaders to even admit the possibility of a Jewish Israel; or on Hamas's
rejection of Red Cross visits to Gilad Schalit; or on the worldwide hypocrisy of
Amnesty cohorts in denying Israel the right to defend itself against thousands
of rockets Forman chose to satirize, excoriate, curse and misrepresent our
prime minister, who is trying desperately to keep the United States as a friend
while protecting us from destruction.
Forman is seemingly more offended by Avigdor Lieberman than by all our murderous
enemies. He and his liberal friends, who place democracy, as they see it, above
Jewish values, are determined to freeze not only settlement and building but the
entire Zionist enterprise in a permanent, slavish submission to our absent Arab
partners in the peace process.
JACOB CHINITZ
Jerusalem
Sir, David Forman's two dozen descriptions of our duly elected prime minister
duplicate those of our worst enemies. It is valuable, for the record, that
Forman so forcefully and eloquently exposes his cause.
ESTER & HANOCH ZEITLIN
Jerusalem
Sir, David Forman abused his highly privileged columnist's slot to launch a
malicious personal attack on the prime minister. His inclusion of vindictive
words like "oily" and "deceitful" was totally inappropriate for a quality
newspaper supplement.
Freedom of speech means reports containing variant points of view. However, I
would have thought most UpFront readers would prefer constructive, professional
analysis to slanderous diatribe.
LYNETTE ORDMAN
Netanya
Uniform applause? Hardly
Sir, In "Windless" (June 26) Naomi Chazan wrote that "Israelis... almost
uniformly applauded the Obama rhetoric and embraced the broad principles that it
contained." This is far from the truth. The majority of Israelis feel Obama's
speech was full of half-truths and misleading conclusions.
For example: The president's basing justification for the creation of the State
of Israel on the Holocaust. Most Israelis were appalled that Obama ignored the
historical facts (a) that a Jewish state had previously existed in the area
known as Palestine; and (b) that the League of Nations in 1921 unanimously
resolved to recreate a Jewish state in that area.
Many Israelis believe Obama omitted these facts to conform to the Arab complaint
that Israel has no historical claim to the land.
For example: Comparing the plight of Palestinian refugees to that of black
Africans sold into slavery, and other comments about the "refugees." Many
Israelis are annoyed and perturbed at Obama's deliberately ignoring the fact
that the refugee issue resulted from the refusal in 1948 of the Arab states
surrounding Israel to accept the UN resolution creating an Israeli state, and
making war on that newly created state.
There is a strong feeling that Obama was implying, "The US and Israel are good
friends, and we want our good friend to sacrifice her future safety to enable me
to show that I am a good friend and supporter of the Arabs."
These are just a few of the reasons why Chazan's expectation of "a flow of
[Obama] supporters to Kikar Rabin" did not materialize.
J. SKLAN
Jerusalem
Talk ain't nothing to celebrate
Sir, Stuart Pilichowski (Letters, July 3) wrote: "When Palestinians begin to
talk about peace... I will begin to celebrate." Most of us, I believe, would
prefer action to talk.
MEIR PERSOFF
Jerusalem
Veterans and Arrivals
Sir, Your Veterans column of June 26 by Gloria Deutsch was an attractive piece
on a fascinating woman. Prof. Livia Bitton-Jackson is my dear friend and
neighbor, and I find it imperative to fill in some gaps in her personal story.
Her son, Dr. Avinoam Bitton, and her daughter, Emily, a psychotherapist, both of
whom she left behind in the United States when she made aliya and because of
whom she has continued commuting to her classes at the university in New York,
were not mentioned.
"I have the best of both worlds," she used to say. "My life in the US with
Avinoam and Emily and their families, and my life in Israel with my husband,
with Steve and Sara and their families.
I remember Livia's ecstasy when Avinoam's daughter Yael, who got married in
Jerusalem, gave birth to her first great-granddaughter in Jerusalem.
I would have liked to see mention of these major accomplishments in Livia
Bitton-Jackson's life.
ZOHAR ALOUFI
Netanya
Sir, Your Arrivals column on Victor Beresticki (July 3) brought back some very
special memories. Victor and his family were part of a small congregation, Rebbe
Finklestein's Shtiebel in St. Gabriel's Road, Brondesbury, northwest London. The
shtiebel had a very warm atmosphere, particularly aided by the rebbetzin's
kitchen. The rebbe, a Rudzhiner hassid, cared deeply for Israel, and many of the
younger generation from that congregation are now living here.
The article noted that Victor's father passed up an offer of a cantorial
position and the family made its way to England. I felt Mr. Beresticki deserved
more than just a passing comment: He was a regular prayer leader in the
shtiebel, and especially for the High Holy Days. This portly man with a twinkle
in his eye had the sweetest voice and most beautiful melodies. To have him lead
us through our prayers was a very moving experience.
RUTH BINSTOCK (GOLDSTEIN)
Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
The gender test
BYLINE: NAOMI CHAZAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 1227 words
HIGHLIGHT: Critical Currents. The formal mechanism for the assurance of gender
equality is currently paralyzed
Gender equality is widely perceived as one of the surest measures of the
robustness of democracies worldwide. It is not surprising that US President
Barack Obama highlighted women's rights as the key to societal freedom and
prosperity in his Cairo address last month. Nor is it coincidental that the
symbol of the reform movement in Iran is a young women, Neda Agha Soltan, slain
in the recent riots. It is therefore particularly disconcerting to note the
stealthy, creeping assault on the status of women here in recent months.
Symptoms of this syndrome abound. These include the legitimation of gender
segregation on buses, the intensification of religious hegemony over personal
law, the blocking of tax breaks for child care and the renewed campaign against
the service of women in the military. They also involve proposed governmental
legislation to expand the authority of religious courts, a move which would
compound the distress of those already engaged in protracted divorce
proceedings. But none is more indicative of the ease with which women's rights
are jettisoned than the undermining of the standing of the Authority for the
Advancement of the Status of Women in the Prime Minister's Office.
Established by law in 1998 during Binyamin Netanyahu's first tenure as prime
minister and touted as a major step toward the institutionalization of women's
rights in the country, the authority is charged with designing and implementing
strategies for the achievement of gender equality. As the official national
machinery whose head is accountable directly to the prime minister, it
coordinates governmental activities affecting women, is responsible for
promoting educational programs on gender equality and plays a key role in
overseeing every aspect of gender policy. And, despite a paltry operating budget
(barely NIS 2 million per annum), this is precisely what the authority has tried
to do - especially since the appointment of Marit Danon as its director in the
summer of 2006.
Danon, the mythological personal secretary of five prime ministers (Yitzhak
Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon), was an
unlikely choice for the position. Her name has become synonymous with the
qualities associated with the ultimate civil servant: efficient, discrete,
affable, competent, loyal, dependable and totally devoted to the job. She
succeeded in serving a series of very different political masters for close to
20 years due to her commitment and good sense (with a brief hiatus from
1996-1999 when Netanyahu preferred his own personal secretary at the time,
Ruhama Avraham).
But these credentials were not necessarily those required of the head of a
national agency dealing with women's affairs. When Ehud Olmert announced the
appointment of Danon (to facilitate the entry of his long-time office manager,
Shula Zaken), feminist activists and the heads of women's organizations feared
that, once again, leadership of the authority would be given over to a personal
appointee with limited interest in forwarding the cause of gender equality.
Today, they are the first to admit that they were wrong.
DANON TACKLED the challenges of her new office with the professionalism and
thoroughness that stood her in such good stead in her previous position. She
embarked on a series of consultations with gender studies experts, grassroots
organizers, women from a variety of sectors, female legislators and specialists
in a broad array of fields touching on women's representation, rights and
prospects. Her inquisitiveness, humility and inclusiveness have combined to
bring new content and energy into what had heretofore been a rather minor
dormant sinecure.
During Danon's first full year in office, she succeeded in vastly expanding
programs for the treatment of victims of sexual violence and substantially
raising awareness of the horrors of trafficking in women. She also supported a
series of audacious campaigns on sexual harassment. But her most important
achievements centered, justifiably, on grounding the role of women in the public
domain. She created an entire network of municipal advisers on the status of
women, augmented their powers through legislation and insisted on fulfilling the
letter of the law on the inclusion and promotion of women in the civil service.
Most significantly, she was the first person to formally introduce gender
mainstreaming into official discourse in Israel.
In 2008, these initiatives were further developed through the establishment of
full-fledged interministerial projects for women seeking to escape from
prostitution and the elaboration of centers to care for the needs of those
subjected to sexual abuse. The authority also launched special programs for Arab
and haredi women, while concentrating more systematically on gender-based income
discrepancies. It underwrote a series of surveys on women in the IDF and
succeeded in securing a policy of gender- sensitive analysis of all official
statistics. These activities were capped by a major achievement: the
introduction of a government decision on gender screening of all new
legislation.
All this entailed not only the participation of civil society organizations and
the willing cooperation of an array of experts, it also demanded rallying
reluctant government agencies and gaining the support of key policymakers.
Danon's passion and connections enabled her to go farther than any of her
predecessors. The special program budget of the authority was increased tenfold
in two years, gender mainstreaming became the norm and plans were made to branch
out into other spheres (including the incorporation of women into negotiating
teams, tackling the distress of women during the current recession and the
expansion of training programs for gender advisers).
And then narrow political interests intervened. Gila Gamliel was appointed a
deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Office, assigned to deal with issues of
women and youth - another invention designed to mollify politicians bereft of
substantive portfolios. The relationship between this (probably temporary) post
and the statutory Authority for the Advancement of the Status of Women is
ambiguous at best. Instead of serving as the key advocate of the authority and
assisting in the bolstering of its powers, the new deputy minister launched a
strategic review which questioned not only its utility but also its viability.
Under the circumstances, Danon resigned in frustration. Inevitably, the autonomy
of the authority has been undercut and its future is unclear. The formal
mechanism for the assurance of gender equality is currently paralyzed.
Given the overwhelming nature of economic, diplomatic and security concerns, it
is easy to discount the whittling away of the gender protection infrastructure
in the country, to neglect the adverse signs of increased gender disparities and
to sacrifice women's rights to immediate political concerns. But not only women
suffer from this nonchalance.
The seemingly casual disregard for institutions designed to safeguard women's
rights is a precursor to the enfeeblement of guarantees for other groups as
well. It also contributes directly to institutional manipulation which
aggravates problems of governance. More than anything else, tampering with the
status of women is the best way to deeply assail our already fragile democracy.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: MARIT DANON tackled the challenges of her new office with the
professionalism and thoroughness that stood her in such good stead in her
previous position. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
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1107 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
A haredi rapprochement with Israel?
BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1176 words
HIGHLIGHT: Think Again. The demise of Zionist ideologues is mirrored by the
decline of anti-Zionist ideology
Recent media coverage of the haredi community has naturally focused on the
rioting over the opening of a Jerusalem parking garage on Shabbat. Media
attention follows action, as the night the day, and that is true both of the
secular and haredi media.
Yet curiously, once one leaves the confines of Mea She'arim, which is something
of an outlier even in the haredi world, one does not find the issue dominating
private discussions. I was in the US at the height of the demonstrations. But
upon my return, I did not hear much talk about them. Such discussion as there
was tended to center on recriminations over the political maneuverings within
the haredi community that helped bring Nir Barkat to the mayor's office.
Obviously, no haredi condones the opening of the parking lot, but the issue is
not a burning one. That most of the population, even the majority of
Jerusalemites, are not Sabbath observant is, after all, hardly news. Protests
will not reverse that fact and may even exacerbate the situation.
With Sabbath demonstrations dominating news coverage, it would have been easy to
overlook a small recent item in these pages. Yet the latter story may tell us
more about the future of haredi-secular relations than the recent protests. Post
military correspondent Yaakov Katz reported on a special program under which the
IAF has been recruiting haredi men, most already married and with children.
Already there are 250 haredi men in the air force, and the Intelligence Corps
and the navy are gearing up for their own comparable programs. Of those enlisted
in the air force program, more than 60 percent have applied for officer
training, the highest rate of any group of enlisted men in the IDF.
Obviously this program serves the interests of both the IDF and the haredim. The
former, faced with declining enlistment, is able to tap into a vast reservoir of
intellectual talent. The latter receive high-level training in sought-after
professions and the possibility of relatively secure jobs in the IDF. Even
beginning IDF salaries are higher than most would receive in kollel.
Yet even if self-interest plays a large role in the bargain between the IDF and
the haredi soldiers, this program could only have come into being in the wake of
changing attitudes to the state within the haredi community. Today, it no longer
occasions surprise in many haredi neighborhoods to see bearded men, who until
recently were learning full-time in kollel, walking around in uniform. That
would not have happened 20 years ago.
The reasons for the change are many. One is the waning of Zionist ideology. Who
today thinks about the classical Zionist project of creating a "new Jew" who
will be the antithesis of everything with which the name Jew was associated in
the Diaspora? The demise of Zionist ideologues is mirrored by the decline of
anti-Zionist ideology. Mea She'arim and a few offshoot communities are the last
bastions of classical anti-Zionist ideology.
No haredi would describe Israel as "the Jewish state," and certainly not as the
"the first flowering of the redemption." But there is a general recognition that
the fate of 6 million Jews cannot be separated from the security of Israel. As
traditional anti-Semitism increasingly takes the form of demonization of Israel
and the application of standards to its defense of its citizens to which no
other nation in the world is subjected, haredim, whose historical consciousness
of Jewish persecution at the hands of the nations is well-nurtured, find
themselves identifying with Israel. And finally, Israel is the center of an
undreamed-of renaissance in Torah learning after the Holocaust. Government
support has played a not inconsiderable role in that rebirth.
MY FRIEND Dr. Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University published a long essay last
year in which he lamented the creation of a hyphenated religious-Zionism, in
which Zionism and Judaism are viewed not only as compatible but the same. The
problem with religious Zionism, he opined, is that it was taken over by the
rabbis and theologians, for whom the state and its institutions are divine
agents, no matter how imperfect they may be in their execution of their agency.
He prefers the commonsensical attitude of the average religious tailor or
shoemaker in Eastern Europe upon first hearing of the fledgling Zionist
movement. On the whole, thought the tailor or shoemaker, it would be better for
Jews to be economically self-sufficient rather than subsisting at the fringes of
the gentile economy. A public square reflecting Jewish values would be
preferable to living with a public square shaped by the symbols of an alien
religion. Better for the institutions of the state to protect Jewish freedom
than to threaten it. And if all this could happen in Eretz Yisrael, so much the
better.
To this minimalistic vision, I suspect many haredim could subscribe. And they
might even add the advantages of Israel as a place of refuge for threatened Jews
and of Jews possessing the military strength to defend themselves rather than
being dependent upon the kindness of strangers.
UNLIKE MOST haredim, I was raised in an ardently Zionist home, and that may
color my views. The only anti- Zionists I ever heard of growing up were those of
the Reform American Council of Judaism, whom we considered barely Jewish.
Recently, I had occasion to experience again my childhood identification with
Israel. I had just finished watching The Third Jihad, a powerful new documentary
on radical Islam. Toward the end of the film, Bernard Lewis, the great Princeton
University orientalist, offers the chilling insight that for the leaders of Iran
"mutual assured destruction might constitute an incentive rather than a
deterrent" from a theological point of view.
That happy thought led me to ask myself the question: Why are we staying here?
My first answer to that question is always that offered by my father: I would
not wish to remain alive in a world that was prepared to watch 6 million Jews
destroyed once again. But a more positive thought occurred to me as well: Israel
is the only country the majority of whose citizens are determined to confront
evil rather than appease it. True, we have had some advantages in reaching this
point. We have seen evil close up in the form of an entire society whipped into
paroxysms of death-seeking fury. And our every experience since the heady days
of Oslo has reinforced the recognition that we have no choice but to be prepared
for war.
Finally, a ba'al teshuva in Brooklyn, who comments under the unlikely name
Spengler, points out something remarkable about Israel. If one plots a graph of
industrialized nations using birthrate as the vertical axis and suicide rate as
the horizontal axis, Israel, with by far the highest birthrate and the second
lowest suicide rate, occupies a quadrant of the graph all by itself, with no
other nation remotely nearby. Something of the traditional, life-affirming
Jewish faith in a better future still permeates the air of Eretz Yisrael.
All things considered, Israel is the best place to live.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Soldier prays at the Kotel. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1108 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
School's out
BYLINE: Samuel G. Freedman
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 985 words
HIGHLIGHT: In the Diaspora. What is different when a Jew no longer leads NYC's
United Federation of Teachers?
Every Sunday morning, as part of my longtime interest in public education, I
read the wedding announcements in The New York Times. What I look for, and what
I so often find, is a bride or groom with a parent who taught in the city's
schools. And almost invariably, the newlywed child is doing something like
banking or law.
The wedding announcements, in their way, chart the end of the era of the Jewish
teacher in New York. More by accident than intent, they chronicle a generational
change that has seen the proportion of Jews in the public-school teaching force
here drop from more than half for much of the 20th century to less than
one-third now.
But I didn't need any research nearly as indirect - or, canny, if I may say so
myself - to see the same kind of change at the top of the teachers' ranks. It
made major news late last month when Randi Weingarten announced her retirement
as president of the United Federation of Teachers, the citywide union.
When she stands down, Weingarten will end 45 years of Jewish leadership of the
UFT, starting with the compelling and controversial Albert Shanker in 1964,
continuing with the ascent of his protege Sandra Feldman in 1986, and
culminating with Weingarten's installation in 1998.
One couldn't ask for a much starker contrast to Weingarten's successor, Michael
Mulgrew. He is, paradoxically, the product of a Catholic high school and a
former member of the carpenters' union, the kind of building-trades union that
has historically been heavily Catholic. He spent most of his teaching career in
New York at a vocational school on Staten Island, another redoubt of gentile
white ethnics.
Nothing in this resume means Mulgrew is undeserving of the UFT presidency; some
of the early buzz, in fact, depicts him as more combative than Weingarten, whose
background was in law. With the city's school system - a million students, 1,200
schools, 80,000 teachers - being run by the two-man monarchy of Mayor Michael
Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, a pugnacious union provides one of the only
checks on untrammeled power, however idealistic its aspirations.
THE MORE relevant question is what is different when a Jew no longer leads the
UFT, and when Jews no longer dominate the union's rank-and-file. For Jews to
flock into teaching and its union was itself a generational advance; those
educators were often the children of Jews who toiled in the garment trades and
for a time made the garment unions like the ILGWU and the Amalgamated the
definition of Jewish labor.
To be a unionized teacher, much less to lead a teachers' union, was to have one
foot in the organized- labor past and the other in the white-collar future. Only
now a teacher's collar isn't white enough for all those betrothed couples in the
wedding announcements. And something inevitably gets lost along the way.
Shanker had his personal roots in the Socialist movement and the civil-rights
group CORE. He fought a bitter internal battle against a Communist-leaning rival
union among New York's teachers. In the epic school decentralization battles of
1968 and 1969, he stood as the lightning rod of opposition to "community
control" by blacks and Puerto Ricans, and wound up, ironically enough, being a
hero to conservatives whom he would have opposed on countless other issues.
It takes nothing away from Feldman and Weingarten to say they could not fill his
outsized silhouette. Maybe it commends them that, inheriting a racially
polarized situation in New York's schools, they chose not to play the
provocateur. Still, they were inevitably the custodians of a certain Jewish
tradition within the union.
'THE UFT has always been marked by certain characteristics sometimes associated
with Judaism," said Richard D. Kahlenberg, author of the excellent Shanker
biography Tough Liberal. "It's always been a very intellectual union, which
engages in high-level discussions and debate. It has, throughout its history,
been sympathetic to Socialism, as many immigrant Jews were. And it has a proud
record of supporting civil rights - and opposing racial quotas - that's
consistent with the views of many American Jews."
Joshua B. Freeman, a labor historian at Queens College, points out that
Weingarten's departure comes after the retirements of other Jewish labor leaders
in New York, particularly of public-employees' unions - Victor Gotbaum, Barry
Feinstein. "The process of ethnic succession," he said, "has ended an era that
saw teacher unionism go from a marginal idea to a powerful force."
At the same time, as the historian and author Hasia R. Diner of NYU points out,
teaching in New York was very much gendered work. It was one of the few
professions, probably the archetypal one, for a Jewish woman in the pre-feminist
era. A lot of female talent wound up in the classroom for lack of alternatives,
and, even so, women went underrepresented in the ranks of principals and, until
Sandra Feldman and Randi Weingarten, the union hierarchy.
"The passing of this leadership," said Diner, the author most recently of We
Remember With Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after
the Holocaust, "represents basically an example of the success of feminism in
opening up a vast range of professional opportunities to women and the
trajectory of Jewish women rushing to take advantage of them."
Diner is surely right, and the Times' wedding announcements offer plenty of
supporting evidence. The position to which Randi Weingarten is ascending,
president of the national union, the American Federation of Teachers, puts her
at the level of a Washington power broker, especially with Democrats holding the
White House and Congress.
In New York, though, her departure from the UFT comes as one more indication
that the Jewish teacher, and maybe the Jewish labor leader, too, is going the
way of the Lower East Side, from vibrant reality to honeyed, irrelevant memory.
www.samuelfreedman.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: RANDI WEINGARTEN speaks at the 2008 Democratic National
Convention. Her new position puts her at the level of a Washington power broker.
(Credit: Bloomberg)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved
1109 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
In the footsteps of Sam Lewis's suck-ups
BYLINE: SARAH HONIG
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1189 words
HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack. The more Netanyahu consents to taking it on the chin,
the more audacious Obama gets
Sometime at the very start of 1982 I attended a function at the US Embassy in
Tel Aviv, which would have been entirely forgettable except that rarely was I
since as nauseated as then.
I came away revolted by the spectacle of my Israeli colleagues eagerly milling
around ambassador Sam Lewis, seeking his attention and trying to outdo each
other in heaping mockery and contempt upon their own prime minister. Brutal
jokes at Menachem Begin's expense came fast and furious. Lewis visibly
appreciated them and laughed along condescendingly. It was one of the sorriest
displays of Israeli self-debasement I had until then witnessed.
But in time I came to regard it as typical of the fawning eagerness to curry
favor with foreign bigwigs. Kowtowing to the exceedingly well-connected and
widely- courted Lewis wasn't merely ingratiating. It also served the local
Left's visceral anti-Begin politics. Undisguised American displeasure with him
seemed a serendipitous source of support.
It was after Begin had serially disobeyed Washington. First he dared destroy the
Iraqi nuclear reactor. Though America should have thanked Israel for the
service, secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger (to my shame a distant relative
of my father's) was livid. Hence previously contracted delivery of fighters was
"suspended." Later the IAF bombed the PLO's Beirut headquarters and more
aircraft deliveries were put on hold. Then the bill extending Israeli law to the
Golan Heights was enacted. The US responded by reassessing its strategic
cooperation agreement.
Begin decided not to take his lumps. He summoned Lewis and subjected him to the
most undiplomatic dressing-down any US diplomat probably ever received from an
ally. Begin bristled at the very notion of American diktats. "Are we a vassal
state?" he demanded and went on to stress that Israel is neither a banana
republic nor a bunch of "14- year-old boys who have to have their knuckles
slapped" for misbehavior.
Begin was on a roll. He told Lewis that Israel wouldn't be intimidated by
threats of punishment and that they would fall on deaf ears. He vowed not to
allow "the sword of Damocles to hang over Israel's head... Jews had survived
without a strategic cooperation memorandum with America for 3,700 years and can
live without it for another 3,700 years."
The Golan legislation, Begin stressed, wouldn't be annulled. This earful was
immediately released verbatim by the Prime Minister's Office for publication, so
the populace would know its government drew red lines and stood by them.
However, Israel's left-dominated media never lost an opportunity to lay bare its
obsequiousness. It reacted with the shock of a stern cleric to outright
unpardonable blasphemy. But more than it was genuinely upset, it exploited
Begin's candid indignation as yet another pretext to pillory him. National pride
was already then perceived as reactionary and uncool, especially when it clashed
with post-Zionist dogma.
HOW LIKE the reaction by most of our subservient scribblers and talking heads to
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's unsolicited recommendation that Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu kick out Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and
replace him with Tzipi Livni. No matter whether we like or dislike Lieberman,
it's at instances like these that no consideration ought to feature in our
internal discourse other than national pride.
Put in the context of Sarkozy's infamous big mouth, his insolence toward
Lieberman is no big deal. Sarkozy apparently appointed himself freelance caustic
critic of far more prominent figures on the world stage than our foreign
minister. The meek retort by Netanyahu - the ostensible heir to Begin's mantle -
is of greater concern. Yet most disconcerting of all is the alacrity with which
current Israeli commentators - fully in the footsteps of Sam Lewis's suck-ups of
yesteryear - seize with alacrity any chance to further their agenda. In some
cases the triumphant gloating at Lieberman's humiliation was tangible. To that
end it was excusable to portray Sarkozy's scorn as gospel.
Such glee is nowadays frequently afforded our pundits, including many employees
at the state's own broadcasting authority, the one involuntarily subsidized by
you and me. Not a day goes by without some pronouncement from the Obama court
about how Israel must comply with Washington's decree to cease all "construction
in the settlements," including in much of Jerusalem.
Netanyahu's response - on those rare occasions when any is at all heard - is as
wan as it was in Paris. He appears timid and wishy-washy. His heart is in the
right place, but he is too nervous to utter a fitting rejoinder. Trepidation may
be embellished as signifying prudent restraint, as not breaching diplomatic
protocol Begin- style, as keeping a cool head and, calculatingly, a tight lip.
Ah, if it were only so.
Unfortunately there's too much cause to suspect that Netanyahu is irresolute. He
may not quake in his boots, but he is too insecure vis-a-vis Obama's barefaced
arrogance and Israel's own homegrown hecklers. Netanyahu's passivity would be
bad enough were this a fixed nonfluctuating situation. The problem is that it
isn't.
The more Netanyahu consents to taking it on the chin, the more audacious Obama
gets and the more any head of government anywhere feels empowered to chime in
and add his/her two cents' worth. Even the relatively friendly Angela Merkel and
Silvio Berlusconi couldn't resist getting in on the act. Obama strikes the tone,
while others sing along and relish harmony at Israel's expense.
As the British government teeter-totters on the brink of collapse, its
headliners appear united solely by their obsession with 50 housing units in the
Jerusalem suburb of Geva Binyamin (a.k.a Adam), five kilometers northeast of
Israel's capital. It boggles the mind to think that world stability hinges on
the project not being completed.
Nevertheless this is the consistent international de rigueur mantra. It is what
non-too-impartial NGOs abroad haughtily hector. It is what a slew of accomplice
"peace- promoting" local NGOs (which derive their funding from European and
other less-than-friendly overseas benefactors) trendily reiterate. It is what
the Israeli coterie of tendentious left-wing news-purveyors unquestioningly
chants.
Under these circumstances, the pushy presumptuousness toward Israel becomes
inevitable. Israel earned the disdain it encounters everywhere. Foreign
governments take liberties against Israeli sovereignty that would be
inconceivable against any other independent country. It's doubtful any other
state anywhere would be treated with similar disrespect, not just by inimical
leaders like Obama, but even by emissaries like George Mitchell. Ours is to do
their bidding even at our palpable peril.
The more Netanyahu delays forthrightly defying such international chutzpa, the
more he invites it. There are times when seemly circumspection is
contraindicated. Begin by now would have called the American ambassador to order
and sent an unequivocal message to said ambassador's boss, even at the risk of
local sycophants rushing to brownnose the latter-day Sam Lewis.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman talks to the press this week.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved
1110 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
A jest for health
BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1133 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit. A comic magician makes images of hospital clowns to
leave in the wards after they've gone home for the night
The 50 young adults in the audience are puzzled. On their fourth day here on the
free birthright israel trip, they have toured the Knesset and are now visiting
Hadassah- University Medical Center, a place they've seen on TV and an icon of
Israeli medical modernity. But instead of meeting, say, an expert on embryonic
stem cells or a nerdy neurosurgeon, the speaker wears supersized saddle shoes
and a Rudolf red nose.
Meet Cris the Clown, aged 50. He's one serious guy. In French-accented English,
this veteran jester describes his day job. He cheers up children who are
undergoing chemotherapy. Cris distracts children having blood tests. He can make
them laugh. He gets them to swallow their yucky medicine. "Sometimes they're
afraid of clowns, and it takes me six months to get them used to me," he says.
"Sometimes they're very, very sad and I can help."
Cris the Clown knows about sadness. Born in France, he was soon an orphan, and
ran away from the orphanage he hated so much. At 18, he served in the French
army and then made his way around the world, working and traveling and working
some more. When he ran out of money in the Sinai, he heard from a fellow
wanderer that you could live for free by working on a kibbutz. He was 25, and
he'd never been to Israel before.
He liked the spunky country with its brash residents. He met his wife on the
kibbutz and eventually moved to Tel Aviv, where they brought up their four
children. Along the way he became a comic magician and won many contests as Cris
L'artiste. (His real name is Daniel.) For 15 years he performed in the Acre
Festival. "A dozen years ago, Israelis didn't know what a red nose clown was.
They only had Purim clowns with triangular hats. It was an educational process."
And then he didn't crave being funny on stage anymore. A friend, who had seen
the movie Patch Adams about the most famous hospital clown, had been clowning in
a hospital at the request of a local doctor. He told Cris about his daily
adventures. "For two years, I listened to him describe his experience and wished
I was working in a hospital, too."
THE OPPORTUNITY finally came in 2002. During the dark days of the intifada, a
clown project called Dream Doctors began as an experiment at Hadassah. Cris won
the job as one of three positions. He had a lot to learn about clowning with
sick kids, but instantly he had a personal dream, too.
Cris is stumped on the English for "IV pole," the metal adjustable stand with
hooks and wheels that allows patients on intravenous fluids to move around. The
audience understands. In children's wards, such poles are often decorated, but
Cris is determined to create a stable IV pole that's fun like a tricycle and
that features the familiar hospital clown's image. "That way we clowns can leave
a little of ourselves in the ward after we go home."
Where to begin? The birthright kids in the audience offered to do an Internet
search for companies that might supply such products. But there are none. He'd
have to make one himself. Cris wants his IV poles to be images of the specific
clowns who work in the hospital.
This is what Cris did. First, he begged an old IV pole from the chief nurse.
Then he bought a used tricycle from a tire repair shop for NIS 100. He convinced
Shlomo, the repairman who fixed medical apparatus at Beit Levinstein, a
rehabilitation hospital in Tel Aviv, to cut off a tricycle wheel and weld the
back onto the pole. He met Avi, a papier-m%oche artist who was volunteering in
still another hospital, and asked him to make a clown prototype.
When his first IV pole was ready, he brought it in to try it out. A big girl
whose brother had set the house afire tried it out and it was stable. A little
boy who fought his infusion leaped out of bed and agreed if he could ride the
special bike. Cris was confident enough to present the project to the head of
the Magi Foundation in Beersheba which runs the clown project. They sent a photo
to a potential donor in Switzerland. He came to Israel in person for a spin.
By now the clown project, called Dream Doctors, had expanded to 17 Israeli
hospitals.
The donor agreed to pay for the raw materials for 28 bikes. Cris began all over
again. He needed 28 poles and 28 tricycles. The clowns themselves delivered the
poles to Cris's living room in Tel Aviv. Cris found the bike model and price he
liked in an Arab village in the North. He got permission from Shlomo's boss for
him to do all the metal work himself. He rented a truck to carry the refitted
bikes to Avi the papier-m%oche maker.
THEN CRIS suffered a heart attack. He was clinically dead. For three months he
lay in the hospital, and he thought of his project. In his absence, Avi had
recruited women soldiers and challenged adults to help him make and paint the
papier-m%oche clowns.
Cris finally got out of bed. The first thing he did was to take part in the
final painting. He delivered 28 clown trikes/IV poles to hospitals all over the
country. Each cost NIS 2400, just under budget.
The room is dark and cool and the students are jet- lagged but not a one falls
asleep - or even yawns - as Cris takes them step by step through the saga with a
PowerPoint presentation. The final slides show the tiny patients using his
inventions. "Ah, this one, she's always angry," he says, his voice rich with
affection, 'And this one, he's a little devil."
The students have a lot of questions. Isn't it hard to work with sick children?
Cris tells them how in his seven years in the hospital, he's seen 60 children
die. "I cry. I'm a clown but I cry."
But Israel is an advanced country and most of the children survive the harsh
treatments needed to vanquish their life-threatening diseases, fully recover, go
home, resume their childhoods. "You have been to the Kotel, yes? In an hour from
now, one of our children will be at the Kotel, celebrating two years of
successful treatment. We are so happy."
Ultimately one of the students asks the question which is at the heart of their
own visit to this country and the Zionist endeavor.
"Why, "asked one of the students, "would you choose to do this in Israel? Why
not in France?" Cris pauses for a minute and then smiles. "I went around the
world, and when I got to Israel I saw that it was very special. It had something
unique that nowhere else has. A spirit. A goodness. People are hard - don't
think they're not - but they're good.
His long fingers form a gun and he pretends to shoot like a cowboy. "It's a
little like the Wild West, you know what I mean? Everything is open. One person
can still make a difference." Then he unwraps a mysterious package on stage.
Voila! It's his personal IV pole tricycle in the bright colors of carousel
figures, with Cris the Clown - red nose, black-and-white shoes - perched on the
back.
If you will it, it is no dream.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
Credibility is key
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 750 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
It's doubtful the media ever assessed David Ben- Gurion's "first 100 days"; or
Moshe Sharett's - or, for that matter, Menachem Begin's.
The idea of evaluating the first 100 days of a modern head of government
originated with the American presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who came
to power in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression. Said political scientist
Robert DiClerico: "The first hundred days of his administration were a bustle of
activity, producing the greatest waterfall of legislation of any president in
[US] history."
Most of FDR's successors found him a hard act to follow. But the 100-day
milestone stuck and eventually gained momentum even outside America. In Britain,
for instance, Margaret Thatcher's leadership was critiqued in June 1975, 100
days after she assumed office - and that's been the case with every premier down
to Gordon Brown. Nicolas Sarkozy, among other European leaders, came into office
promising results "within 100 days."
BINYAMIN Netanyahu may have imported the "first 100 days" concept to this
country when he became premier in 1996 and pledged to come up with a list of
state-owned companies that would be privatized. He didn't.
Ehud Barak's first 100 days were charitably evaluated, in October 1999, as "at
least setting the stage" for fulfilling the promises he had made in his
campaign. When Ariel Sharon was elected to pick up the pieces of Barak's
premiership, his first 100 days were devoted to figuring out how to defeat
Yasser Arafat's second intifada. Yet Sharon still managed to obtain Knesset
support for a bold economic recovery plan.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's first 100 days were upstaged by the kidnapping of
Gilad Schalit and the collapse of his convergence plan.
Now the first-100-day criterion has come back to haunt Netanyahu, with Kadima
opposition leader Tzipi Livni attacking his government for zigzagging, lack of
direction, and failing to address the economic crisis. Her party unveiled a
bumper-sticker - "Bibi's the same Bibi. 100 days, zero accomplishments" - which
reportedly upset the premier when an aide showed it to him.
Meanwhile, on the steadfast Right, Netanyahu is being pilloried for turning his
back on what was understood to be his pledge to oppose a Palestinian state.
NO ONE can fault the premier when unprincipled reporters ambush his venerable
100-year-old father to extract assertions that make the son look like a
dissembler. Yet the criticism that Netanyahu has been zigzagging, on both
foreign policy and domestic issues, is not without merit.
He hesitated too long before making his Bar-Ilan speech articulating mainstream
Israel's acquiescence in a demilitarized Palestinian state.
He misguidedly enlarged Defense Minister (and embattled Labor Party chief) Ehud
Barak's portfolio to make him de facto special envoy to the Obama
administration. By sidelining Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu has
been signaling a "soft" negotiating strategy when, arguably, a better bargaining
approach - given President Obama's apparently resolute determination to force a
categorical and unconditional settlement freeze on Israel - would have been to
let the pragmatic but tough Lieberman play his scripted role.
The government has also been ineptly leaking its compromise proposal for a
settlement freeze before locking in Washington's assent, eliciting State
Department denials and making a face-saving compromise harder to achieve.
In the domestic sphere, Netanyahu's first 100-day flip-flops on budget cuts and,
this week, on the proposed imposition of VAT on fruits and vegetable, have
manifestly undermined his credibility.
On the positive side, he's advocated a two-year budget process, which if
implemented will promote fiscal stability. He has sought to codify the Bank of
Israel's independence. His championing of a bill to reform the Israel Lands
Administration, while problematic, deserves to be frankly debated.
AT THE end of the day, Israel's hyper-pluralist political system cannot fairly
be compared to America's, or even Britain's forms of government. For an American
president, the 100-day countdown is typically accompanied by a political
honeymoon. Not so in Israel, where Netanyahu was forced to cobble together a
coalition of ideologically disparate parties, making and breaking promises just
to get from one day to the next.
But the peculiarity of our political system notwithstanding, Netanyahu needs to
stop hemorrhaging his credibility if he is to provide the leadership these times
demand.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
Letters
BYLINE: Netta Kohn, Kurt Simon, David Goshen, Joel Weisz
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 506 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Made my choice
Sir, - I have been mulling over "Obama says 'absolutely' no green light for
Israeli action against Iranian nuke sites" (July 8), which expounds the view of
Adm. Mike Mullen that both Iran's achievement of a nuclear capability and a
strike by Israel against such a capability would be equally destabilizing for
the Middle East.
I have concluded that a destabilized Middle East with Israel intact and safe is
infinitely preferable to a destabilized Middle East with a nuclear Iran in situ.
In fact, so convinced am I that I am not open to a discussion of alternatives,
nor am I willing to "vote" on it.
Every organism, and certainly every psychologically healthy person, puts
self-preservation first, except when ready to sacrifice for a higher value or
ideal.
I hope I am forgiven for stating that pleasing Barack Obama is not such an
ideal.
NETTA KOHN
Jerusalem
Tell 'em
Sir, - Vice President Joe Biden, asked if the US would stop Israel from taking
military action against Iran said: "The US cannot dictate to another sovereign
nation what they can and cannot do."
Is the US not telling us what to do when it "orders" us to stop building in
Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria?
It's time our government told the world that we are an independent nation and
will do what it takes to protect our people and land ("Biden's signal,"
Editorial, July 7).
KURT SIMON
Jerusalem
Get rid of
those knives!
Sir, - It is illogical for the police to be allowed to stop drivers at random
for tests to see if they have consumed more than the permitted level of alcohol
- but not to be allowed to conduct random body searches for dangerous knives
("Ashdod teen stabbed to death in weekend violence," July 5).
At present, under the present law against carrying dangerous knives, a policeman
is allowed to conduct a body search only
* if he is convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the knife-carrier is on his
way to perpetrate a crime against a citizen, using a knife;
* if he has received a search warrant from a judge permitting him to search a
particular citizen;
* if he is on duty outside a nightclub, bar or place of entertainment.
Our legislators must urgently come to the rescue and expand the powers allowed
our police in this respect. We must get knives off the street!
DAVID GOSHEN
Kiryat Ono
Hot-tempered,
misguided Jews
Sir, - Regarding the recent violent Jerusalem protests to "uphold the honor" of
the Sabbath, I'd like to state that as a religious Jew, I am diametrically
opposed to protesters using violence - in any form - to express their views.
Sadly, they are totally misguided and disparage the very ideals they purport to
defend.
Our Prophets clearly stated (Isaiah 42): "[The ways of the Torah] are pleasant,
and all her pathways are peaceful."
These agitators have no basis, no recognized rabbinical approval for their
despicable behavior and do not represent the authentic Torah community in any
way. They should be recognized for what they truly are - irresponsible,
hot-tempered individuals venting their anger and frustration.
JOEL WEISZ
Brooklyn
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The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
Numbering the days of dictators
BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 1845 words
HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had reason to feel good about himself this
week. Less than a month after he secured his hold on power for another four
years by rigging the presidential elections, Ahmadinejad felt comfortable
addressing his subjugated nation as its rightful dictator. So in a chilling
televised performance on Tuesday, he triumphantly declared the stolen June 12
poll the "freest" and the "healthiest" elections in the world and promised they
would act as a harbinger for Islamic revolution worldwide.
Ahmadinejad's accomplishments these past few weeks have been vast and
unmistakable. By securing the unconditional support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
for his power grab, Ahmadinejad killed three birds with one stone. He ensured
that the clerical hierarchy in Qom - which is dependent on Khamenei for its
financial stability - acquiesced to his authority. He expanded the Revolutionary
Guards Corps' control over the country by making it the indispensable guardian
of the revolution. And he effectively transformed Khamenei from the "supreme
leader" into a creature of Ahmadinejad's will. The moment that Khamenei gave
Ahmadinejad his full support and gave a green light to the Revolutionary Guards
to repress the protesters, Khamenei tied his own fate to that of his president.
This means that today Ahmadinejad is completely free to maintain and escalate
his policy of international brinksmanship on all levels. From Iran's race toward
nuclear capabilities, to its efforts to destabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, to its
support for Hizbullah and Hamas, to its support for anti-American regimes in
Latin America and its cultivation of terror networks in the Western hemisphere,
to its strategic proliferation alliance with North Korea, Ahmadinejad's
continued reign means that the world can expect expanded Iranian activity on all
these fronts.
In the meantime, the rest of the world's response to events in Iran has been
discouraging. The G-8's decision Wednesday to wait until late September to even
consider stronger sanctions against Iran means that at a minimum Ahmadinejad has
another three months to enrich uranium without worry. And given that US
President Barack Obama is on record supporting pursuing negotiations with Iran
until at least January 2010, it is hard to imagine that the international
community will take any concerted action against Iran in the foreseeable future.
As he moves forward, no doubt Ahmadinejad takes heart from the supine US
response to North Korea's July 4 missile launches. On Tuesday, Yediot Aharonot
reported that Israeli analysts who reviewed videotapes of North Korea's missile
tests concluded that alongside the various short range Scuds it sent over the
Sea of Japan, Pyongyang also launched a Taeopodong-2 multi-stage long range
missile capable of reaching Alaska. Tal Inbar, head of the Space Research
Center, said, "The three seconds seen [of the Taeopodong-2] on the video prove
how much North Korea's long range missile program has advanced."
At the same time, both South Korean intelligence and US Defense Department
sources have accused North Korea of responsibility for launching massive
cyber-attacks against US and South Korean computer systems over the past week.
The attacks temporarily crippled multiple systems including those of the
National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, the South Korean Foreign
Ministry, the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, and The Washington Post.
In the face of all of this, the Obama administration has been disturbingly
timid. The White House's most consistent response to North Korea's belligerent
moves has been to ignore them and hope North Korea decides to behave itself.
Matching their meekness toward Iran, the G-8 leaders responded to Pyongyang's
most recent provocations with an announcement that they would like to become
friends with Kim Jong Il. As Obama put it, "It's very important for the world
community to speak to countries like Iran and North Korea and encourage them to
take a path that does not result in a nuclear arms race in places like the
Middle East."
OVER THE past several weeks, as the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran have become
ever more brazen in demonstrating their belligerent contempt for the West, the
prevailing wisdom has argued that the West has no good options for containing or
defeating them.
The traditional take on North Korea is that the world's leading missile and
nuclear proliferator poses less of a burden to global stability than a
post-regime North Korea filled with millions of starving people who have been
cut off from the world for 60 years. By this thinking, the world is better off
living with a psycho-state capable of fomenting a global nuclear war than caring
for its victims.
As for Iran, as Gabriel Schoenfeld wrote last month in The Wall Street Journal,
due to the gutting of the CIA's capacity to conduct covert political warfare
during the 1970s, today the US lacks the capability to assist Iranian regime
opponents in their efforts to overthrow the mullocracy. As Schoenfeld put it,
"the US appears utterly powerless to influence the course of events."
Schoenfeld urged the US to move swiftly to rebuild its covert political
operations capacity. While this certainly makes sense, in truth, the US doesn't
need to build up much of a capacity to topple either the regime in Pyongyang or
the regime in Teheran.
Despite Ahmadinejad's success in maintaining his grip on power, it is an
indisputable fact that regime opponents succeeded these past few weeks as never
before in destabilizing the regime and in demonstrating its hollow core. Even as
Ahmadinejad was glorying in his victory, his opponents - defeated presidential
candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and former president Muhammad
Khatami - were calling for a three-day national strike.
On Thursday, thousands of Iranians risked life and limb to heed the call to
commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the regime crackdown on university
students. That the 1999 crackdown occurred on Khatami's orders shows that regime
opponents are looking for fundamental, revolutionary change in the regime - not
cosmetic reforms.
It is worth noting that Iran's current revolutionary ferment arose from the
unlikeliest of sources. The June 12 elections were not supposed to pose a
challenge to the regime. All they were supposed to do was pit one regime
loyalist against three other regime loyalists.
The fact that the public could view Ahmadinejad's decision to steal the election
from former prime minister and regime loyalist Mousavi as an opportunity to
bring down the regime demonstrates clearly the magnitude of the public's
rejection of the Islamic Revolution. Quite simply, if the Iranian people can
take these elections as an excuse to call for the overthrow of the regime, any
spark can light that fire.
WHILE A refurbished CIA would no doubt be helpful in this regard, it is not
necessary. The international community already has the necessary tools to do the
job. All it needs - indeed all any one country needs - is the will to actively
assist Iran's disparate dissident groups who separately and together wish to see
the end of the mullocracy.
Iran's borders are porous. Whether through international defense contractors or
covert operatives working for any country, arms can be easily smuggled to
various disaffected minorities from the Azeris to the Kurds, the Baluchis the
Ahwaz Arabs, and the Baha'is. Iraq's ratlines run two ways. So do Afghanistan's.
As to the Persians, they are already taking the lead in calling for national
strikes. They should be supported through Internet, radio and satellite
broadcasts. Whether through the Voice of America, the Voice of Israel, Radio
Free Europe, or Radio Free Iran, foreign agents can pump in truthful and
relevant information about the regime and enable coordinated, countrywide unrest
that could potentially topple the regime in a matter of days or weeks.
Then there is North Korea. As ailing dictator Kim Jong Il uses his brinksmanship
to secure a smooth transfer of control over his malnourished slave state to his
son ahead of his death, it seems as though no one in the West has a clue what to
do about North Korea. The US, we have been told, is too overextended with its
deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq to successfully deter or prevent North Korea
from carrying out further provocations and proliferation activities. And anyway,
for years we have been told that North Korea isn't really serious about its
threats. As far as the "experts" are concerned, North Korea's leaders don't
really mean anyone any harm. They just want to scare us all a little to make
sure we don't get any ideas about bringing them down.
But the fact is that between its own provocations and its massive proliferation
of missiles and nuclear technology, North Korea is an enormous threat to global
security. And it is also a fact that overthrowing the regime in North Korea is
the easiest, safest, fastest, and most humane way to prevent the likes of Kim
Jong Il from provoking and proliferating the world into a nuclear conflagration.
All it would take to put an end to this monstrous regime is for South Korea to
open up its borders. How long would it take for the last North Korean to turn
off the lights when Seoul beckoned over the horizon?
THE MODELS for overthrowing the regimes in Teheran and Pyongyang are not new.
Modified versions were successfully implemented just 20-odd years ago. The model
for Iran is Poland circa 1981. The model for North Korea is East Germany in
1989.
Unfortunately, whereas in the 1980s the leaders of the Free World were committed
to winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union by securing the freedom of
those who lived under Communism's jackboot, today, led by Obama, the Free World
behaves as though the Berlin Wall fell of its own devices. The will of free men
and women risking everything to oppose tyranny had nothing to do with it, we are
told. If we care about peace, we should appease the likes of Ahmadinejad and
Kim, not bring them down.
On Tuesday, an insect wrecked Ahmadinejad's victory speech. As he bragged that
Iranian democracy is a role model for the world, a large moth zoomed around him,
breaking his train of thought. Ahmadinejad was brought low before his people by
a moth he couldn't swat.
If a bug could humiliate Ahmadinejad in what was supposed to be his moment of
triumph, surely the willing nations of the world - or even just Israel -
together with the brave Iranian people can bring him down. It would certainly be
more cost effective than trying to negotiate a deal with a nuclear-armed
mullocracy.
And certainly the South Koreans and the Japanese can feed the starving North
Koreans and free them from the bondage of their monstrous regime. Doing so would
be vastly less expensive than living under the shadow of Pyongyang's
nuclear-armed psycho-regime.
Just because the US is currently on vacation from its role as leader of the Free
World doesn't mean that other free people cannot do the right thing.
caroline@carolineglick.com
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The Jerusalem Post
July 10, 2009 Friday
Give substance to the vision
BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 1408 words
HIGHLIGHT: EDITOR'S NOTES. Politics is the art of the possible - not the barren
art of avoiding vital decisions in the unreasonable hope that everything will
somehow resolve itself
Early on Monday afternoon, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman convened a press
conference in the Knesset to explain that he could not conduct negotiations with
the US about a settlement freeze because he is himself a settler, and one who
lives "in a small, isolated settlement" at that.
"From my standpoint there is clearly a conflict of interest," he said. He
wouldn't want to be blamed, he added, "for intentionally torpedoing important
diplomatic negotiations."
Just a little earlier that same day, on a hilltop within sight of Lieberman's
home settlement of Nokdim, southeast of the capital, an articulate resident of
Ma'aleh Rehavam was explaining the realities of outpost life to a visiting group
of American Jewish lay leaders.
She sketched the outpost's history - it was founded almost eight years ago, and
named for tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi, the former general and emphatic
settlement supporter who had just been assassinated in Jerusalem's Hyatt Regency
Hotel by Palestinian gunmen. Accessed via a bumpy road from the Kfar Eldad
settlement, it was not fenced off - insistently not, she said, since Israel and
the Jews had the right to live everywhere in Judea and Samaria and should not
enclose themselves in restricted enclaves. And there had been no incidents of
violence with Palestinians in the area, she added, looking out across the
surrounding empty hillsides.
She spoke of the rich variety of fruit trees that are one of the community's
hallmarks, mentioned the latest births that had helped lift the outpost's
population from its three original trailers to about 40 residents, noted that
they were a rare mix of Orthodox and secular, and enthused about Shabbatot where
everyone usually gravitated to one or other of the prefab homes in an informal
celebration of their pioneering community.
She also said that Ma'aleh Rehavam was established with hundreds of thousands of
shekels of assistance from various government ministries. She said it was built
on land that was allocated years ago to Lieberman's Nokdim; indeed Ma'ariv
recently lost a libel case for falsely reporting it was constructed on privately
owned Palestinian land. She reported that it receives water, power and telephone
service via neighboring settlements. And she pointed to the prefab where the IDF
parks its jeep during pauses in its 24/7 security patrols.
In other words, she made clear, all the necessary requirements for viable living
were and are provided by the state and its various arms and institutions.
But Ma'aleh Rehavam has also been threatened with demolition for most of its
brief lifespan. And, as she acknowledged, Defense Minister Ehud Barak - who just
happened to be discussing settlement freezes with US envoy George Mitchell that
very same day in London, and pledging the imminent demolition of two dozen West
Bank outposts - had refused to sign the paperwork that would legitimize its
existence.
MA'ALEH REHAVAM is a quintessential example of Israel's abiding confusion as to
its priorities and needs in the territories of Judea and Samaria - areas it
captured in the preemptive war it fought for its survival in 1967.
Forty-two years later, that confusion - that immaturity - is coming home to
roost.
For four decades, our national policies beyond the Green Line have reflected an
unresolved, often conflicting maelstrom of imperatives.
For some governments, and some Israelis, this was territory to be used as a
bargaining chip for the normalized ties we sought with the Palestinians and the
Arab world; territory that we lacked the numbers to dominate demographically;
territory it was morally and physically costly to seek to retain; territory
where, like it or not, another people lived.
For others, we had liberated historically resonant land, and won it fair and
square, moreover, in a war forced upon us. This was land that could give us
greater security and protection, land to which we had a peerless claim but that
had been denied us when our sovereignty was revived, and land that should now be
populated with Jews.
For most governments, for most Israelis, it was a mixture of both imperatives.
Most governments, most Israelis, wanted it all - regional peace, viable
coexistence with the Palestinians, a permanent stake in biblical Judea and
Samaria, greater strategic depth. But while the people may be forgiven for
dreaming impossible dreams, governments know - or should know - that we cannot
have everything we want. As Otto von Bismarck recognized, they should know that
politics is the art of the possible - not the barren art of avoiding vital
decisions in the unreasonable hope that everything will somehow resolve itself.
LIKE IT or not - and opinion polls carried recently by The Jerusalem Post
strongly suggest the latter - the world's only superpower appears to have
decided that Israel's best interests require it to freeze construction beyond
the Green Line.
Like it or not, the Obama administration - unmoved by Israel's entreaties and
even by voices at home suggesting it is subverting its own interests in
obsessing over a settlement freeze - appears convinced that this is the way to
extract meaningful steps toward normalization from a recalcitrant Arab world.
Like it or not, Washington appears unimpressed by Israeli assurances that it is
hardly building anyhow, that it is restricting construction to within existing
settlement parameters, that it is providing no government incentives for
migration to the settlements. America has misgivings over such assurances in
good part because of the relentless stream of reports to the contrary, and in
part, too, because some of the criteria for measuring growth were never actually
pinned down.
In his extensive interview on these pages last week, Ariel Sharon's former
bureau chief Dov Weissglas expressed the concern that the Americans, in their
attempted drive from settlement freeze to dramatic Middle East progress, might
be tempted to convene some kind of international conference and to seek to
impose their vision of a permanent accord, leaping over all the monitored phases
of the road map approach to Palestinian statehood.
Weissglas did not anticipate this happening in the next month or two - but urged
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to make sure it couldn't happen at all by
insisting immediately on the upholding of the road map sequence.
But Weissglas, who mused about an American leap to final-status talks "in
another year, if things in 'Palestine' are moving in a positive direction," may
have been overly sanguine. The American focus on the Israeli- Palestinian
conflict in general, and the settlement freeze in particular, does not bespeak
an administration ready to twiddle its thumbs for another 12 months.
FOR ALL that Netanyahu is today veritably extolling the virtues of the two-state
vision he had so long resisted, for all the pressures he is now beginning to
feel from within his own party, for all the precariousness of the current
relative stability in the West Bank and the inconvenient truth that a robust
terrorist organization rules Gaza, the Obama administration seems bent on what
it sees as saving Israel from itself. First-year hope trumping bitter
experience, it seems convinced it can create a climate via Israeli concessions
in which true Palestinian compromise and wider Arab reconciliation will
flourish.
So if, as he now declares, the prime minister has a vision, let him urgently
transform its sketched parameters into substance. If, as he now claims, he can
drive a better bargain than his predecessors, let him move beyond the rhetoric.
Let him take the challenge that previous governments have ducked for 42 years,
and reconcile Israel's conflicting desires for normalization of ties and for
retention of territory. Puncture the confusion; prioritize, allocate and
relocate. Tell the residents of Ma'aleh Rehavam, and of countless other
committed focal points of Jewish life, whether they sustain or undermine the
Zionist enterprise. Tell them unequivocally, and tell the world, too. Set out
our true needs, clearly and comprehensibly. Then vigorously pursue them.
Netanyahu does not enjoy the luxury of doing a Lieberman, of removing himself
from the equation. He must lead.
For if we don't make up our minds, if the prime minister doesn't make up his
mind, the signs are multiplying that others are bent on making our minds up for
us.
And while we may be untenably confused and conflicted, they may be dangerously
ignorant.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2009 Thursday
Limit visits to Hamas inmates
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 724 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
What did Gilad Schalit eat yesterday? Is he getting proper nutrition, enough to
drink? We have no idea. There has been no sign of life from him for over two
years, as Noam Schalit, father of the soldier abducted from inside Israel in
June 2006, told Richard Goldstone's Geneva-based UN fact-finding mission on the
Gaza conflict this week.
Schalit pointed out that his son isn't only being held for ransom - a war crime
in itself - but that he's being denied the most rudimentary rights specified by
the Geneva Convention, among them regular Red Cross visits.
A bill now pending before the Knesset, introduced by MK Danny Danon (Likud) and
co-sponsored by 11 other lawmakers, would redress some of the imbalance between
how Israel treats Hamas prisoners and how Hamas is treating its Israeli hostage.
If brought to a vote, the bill is expected to pass.
Hamas is holding Schalit at an unknown location, and we shudder to think of his
conditions. Does he ever see the light of day? What is the state of his health?
How much living space has he been granted? Where does he sleep? What sanitary
facilities are at his disposal? Is he kept bound?
No one has ever visited him. There was just one audio recording on the first
anniversary of his kidnapping.
The ransom Hamas demands for Schalit is the release of over 1,000 lawfully
imprisoned terrorists. The disproportion here is not only numerical; Schalit, 19
when snatched, had committed no wrong and had never spent a day in court. The
Hamas prisoners were tried with all the privileges of due process and convicted,
many for heinous crimes such as dispatching suicide bombers.
One of them, for instance, Abdallah Barghouti, engineered massacres which
claimed 67 Israeli lives. Ahlam Tamimi escorted the bomber to Jerusalem's Sbarro
pizzeria on August 9, 2001 and was an active accomplice in the murders of 15
innocents, seven of them children. Five of the slain were members of a single
family - parents and their three children.
Yet according to sources inside Israel's prison service, these murderers enjoy
comfortable accommodations. In fact, the conditions for convicted terrorists are
superior to those of common criminals.
Within the high-security penitentiaries, terrorist convicts enjoy semi-autonomy.
They have their own kitchens and determine their own menus. At their disposal
are free canteens, open round the clock, where they can drop in and prepare food
and snacks as they please. They are allowed to accumulate personal equipment.
Each cell is outfitted with a TV set offering 12 cable channels.
Regardless of formal prison regulations, the convicts have computers and cell
phones. They get all the books and magazines they wish, along with games,
recreational material and hobby kits. Many pursue their studies and some have
even taken academic degrees.
They are allowed to see their families frequently and enjoy conjugal visits.
Some prisoners marry while behind bars and have brought children into the world.
THE SCHALIT bill wouldn't touch most of these perks. It aims only to limit
visits to Hamas prisoners while access to Schalit is denied. The bill wouldn't
even eliminate all visits. It would just restrict them to what is stipulated by
the Geneva Convention - visits by Red Cross representatives once every three
months. It would, additionally, permit regular consultations with a lawyer. This
is still far more than Schalit gets.
Yet security officials close to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, concerned
that passage of the bill could negatively impact the negotiations for Schalit's
release, opposed a vote on the legislation this week by the Ministerial
Committee on Legislation (where a majority exists in its favor). Hamas has
threatened that the bill "would complicate negotiations for a swap" - not that
there's been any demonstrable progress thus far.
Schalit's minimal Geneva Convention protections have been flouted by Hamas. The
only thing that hasn't been attempted is a modest measure to redress the
absurdity whereby convicted mass murderers are enjoying perks here, while our
abducted hostage is held incommunicado, perhaps literally kept in the dark.
The Ministerial Committee on Legislation is tentatively scheduled to resume
discussion of the bill on Sunday, though continued opposition by the security
establishment may delay action further. We urge prompt approval.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2009 Thursday
Letters
BYLINE: Boomie Pinter, Rabbi Eliezer Parkoff, Yehoshua Sheffield, Boruch
Clinton, Yossi Ginzberg, Shimmy Weiss, Yehuda Paret, Mark Shapiro, Jack Davis,
Michael Kelmar, Michael and Meira Kirzner, Leslie Aiello, Shlomo Spitzer, Isaac
Nutovic, Mervyn Doobov
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1069 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Orthodox readers react strongly to haredi rioting in Jerusalem
Sir, - I stand with Rabbi Yakov Horowitz in condemning the violence against
Israeli police, and against obstructing justice ("American rabbi urges haredi
leaders to condemn violence in Jerusalem," July 8).
BOOMIE PINTER, President
West Lawrence Civic Association
New York
Sir, - What do you have against us? I saw the TV broadcasts of the
demonstrations, and the police looked like they were rioting. When haredim
demonstrate, it gets noisy like any demonstration, but they're not going to kill
the cops.
However, being a haredi resident of Jerusalem, I must inform you I didn't go to
the demonstration. I know the bunch who run the demonstrations, and they are
loudmouths and fanatics.
Granted, the politicians are botching everything up. Mayor Barkat has his issues
and must placate the needs of the seculars, but the city is the holy city of
Jerusalem, and the seculars just can't get it.
Yet the problem is political and being blown out of proportion by secular and
religious alike. There are political ways of dealing with it.
Those who rioted are not haredim, they are hooligans. In Jewish law they are
monetarily and personally responsible for any damage incurred. Any mass labeling
of all haredim is a personal insult to me and my family.
I may disagree with your editors, and the secular citizens, but I am a
law-abiding resident of Jerusalem and insulted when anyone with a beard and
black hat is dumped into the same disgusting category.
RABBI ELIEZER PARKOFF
Jerusalem
Sir, - Those people who seem to be representing Jews worldwide (especially us
frum Jews) with their violent behavior do not, I believe, represent Jews as a
whole. Please stop viewing these people as our spokesmen, because they are not.
YEHOSHUA SHEFFIELD
Baltimore
Sir, - I haven't had the opportunity to visit Israel for three decades.
Nevertheless, last week's horrifying Jerusalem riots in "support" of Shabbos
have not left me untouched. As an Orthodox Jew, I'm humiliated by any hint of
association with these people.
The Torah Judaism that I recognize through the lessons of my beloved teachers
and through the Torah texts, whose study is my primary vocation, tolerates no
violence and considers the irresponsible behavior of recent days reprehensible.
Let my voice be added to a rising swell of protest.
BORUCH CLINTON
Ottawa, Canada
Sir, - The fist-waving, angry individual photographed at a demonstration is not
one of the kind, gentle, loving haredim I know, charitable with their time and
money and love for their fellow-man. He's not really haredi, he's simply wearing
a costume.
YOSSI GINZBERG
New York
Sir, - Shame on these "haredim." They represent a lie, not the Torah.
SHIMMY WEISS
Monsey, New York
Sir, - I'm a Sabbath-observant Jew and I try to help other Jews, regardless of
affiliation, because I see them as brothers and friends.
The "religious Jews" who throw rocks, burn garbage on the Sabbath and are
violent and confrontational with police do not represent me or how I feel about
Judaism or Israel.
I believe the way to secure the Land and the blessings the Torah promises is
through prayer, helping others, Torah observance and keeping the Sabbath.
YEHUDA PARET
Morristown, New Jersey
Sir, - I am an observant Jew writing to let you know that my wife and I
explicitly oppose the violence associated with segments of the haredi
population.
Please don't let the actions of a small number of misguided fanatics become the
general public's perception of a religious person!
MARK SHAPIRO
Passaic, New Jersey
Sir, - We have endured suicide bombings, drive-by killings, stabbings,
shootings, death from bulldozers driven by extremist Arabs - and now Jerusalem
residents face confusion, chaos and violence caused by our own anti- Zionist
militant ultra-Orthodox Jews covering their ulterior motives with the excuse
that Sabbath is being desecrated.
Burning trash cans is unlawful and expensive to all ratepayers. Throwing a stone
is no different than shooting a bullet; it is a lethal weapon. These violent
actions and politicized protests against the rule of law should be answered not
with "questionable restraint" but with the law enforcement authorities' iron
fist.
JACK DAVIS
Jerusalem
Sir, - As a haredi Jew, I need to publicly protest against the imbeciles making
a massive desecration of God's name. They are a disgrace to the Jewish people.
MICHAEL KELMAR
Baltimore
Sir, - Although the issue of Shabbos is sacrosanct, we must strongly condemn the
tactic of violent, confrontational, abusive behavior currently being displayed
by our fellow yidden.
It belies and degrades the extraordinary level of decency, kindness and concern
that is the hallmark of the truly integrated Torah-observant world.
We wish to add our voices to the camp of normalcy, forethought and
solution-oriented approaches.
MICHAEL & MEIRA KIRZNER
Toronto
Sir, - I am a Shabbat-observing Jew raising my children to be proud of their
beliefs while respecting other people's right to decide their own path in life.
As a person not raised in a Torah-observant home, I can state with 100-percent
certainty that more effective outreach is accomplished by simply sharing the
beauty of authentic Jewish family life.
Please ignore these extremists. Let's not give the enemies of our people any
more ammunition with which to besmirch us.
LESLIE AIELLO
Hillside, New Jersey
Sir, - These bored youths and severely misguided adults in no way represent the
pleasant ways of the Torah. Come to Lakewood, and let me show you the untold
acts of Jewish hesed - lovingkindness - there.
SHLOMO SPITZER
Lakewood, New Jersey
Sir, - Count me firmly in Rabbi Horowitz's camp: not only against the violence,
but also for the need to speak out against these hooligans.
ISAAC NUTOVIC
New York
Take VIPs to Hadassah
Sir, - Marc Lesnick's letter "My Arab roommate in Hadassah Hospital," (July 5)
deserves wide circulation. His observation that every patient, regardless of
nationality or religion, receives the same level of care is undoubtedly true of
all Israeli hospitals.
I have long thought that visiting statesmen should be taken to Hadassah to see
this for themselves; it's not far from Yad Vashem, where they all go.
In fact, given Barack Obama's total misunderstanding of Israel's raison d'etre,
as exemplified in his Cairo speech, serious thought should be given to taking
foreign dignitaries to Hadassah instead of Yad Vashem.
MERVYN DOOBOV , Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2009 Thursday
The best long-term investment Israel could make
BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1009 words
HIGHLIGHT: Civil Fights. Since debt servicing swallows one-third of our national
budget, paring down debt would free up billions for other goals
The Knesset has begun debating the budget for 2009-10 and, as usual, MKs are
lining up to demand more government funding for various worthy causes. This begs
a question: Have they simply not bothered to read the budget proposal, or are
they cynically ignoring it to score electoral points? Because anyone who has
read the bill would realize that over the long run, there is only one way to
increase government spending on important goals such as education, health and
welfare: pare down debt.
The single largest item in the budget is neither defense nor transfer payments,
but debt repayment. At NIS 111.4 billion, this will account for fully 31.5
percent of all government spending in 2009. That is almost double the 16.2%
allotted to defense, the next largest item in the budget; almost triple the NIS
37.4b. allotted to education, including higher education; and 3.5 times the NIS
32.1b. allotted to health care.
Clearly, if we did not have to allocate such a huge percentage of the budget to
debt repayment, we would have tens of billions of additional shekels every year
to devote to education, health and welfare. This makes paring down debt the best
long-term investment the country could make.
Unfortunately, the proposed 2009-10 budget does the opposite: It will almost
triple the annual budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product, from
2.1% last year to 6.0% this year and 5.5% next year. In shekel terms, this will
increase the total debt level by about NIS 15b. this year and another NIS 14b.
in 2010. Thus in future years, the amount we will have to spend on debt
repayment will increase still further, leaving even less money for health,
education and welfare.
The debt level, at 78.3% of GDP in 2008, is already high by international
standards: The average for OECD countries (i.e. the developed world) last year
was only 57.0% of GDP. Even the US, now reeling from a financial crisis caused
in part by excessive debt, has a lower debt level than Israel; its debt totaled
only 73.2% of GDP last year.
But the 2009-10 budget proposal would make the situation far worse: It calls for
raising the debt to 84% of GDP in 2009 and 87% in 2010, thus reversing five
years of steadily declining debt levels.
And of course, that is just the opening shot: Now that the budget has moved to
the Knesset, MKs are seeking to increase expenditures still further - without,
needless to say, proposing any compensatory cuts or revenue-raising measures. In
short, they want to increase the debt, and hence the burden on future
generations, even further.
ANY ATTEMPT to alter the budget now admittedly faces two objective hurdles.
First, we are already halfway through 2009, so the 2009 budget must be passed
urgently, leaving no time to go through it with a fine-tooth comb looking for
places to cut. Second, we are in a recession, making this the wrong moment to
cut big-ticket items such as welfare or unemployment benefits.
Nevertheless, both these problems are solvable. First, the Knesset could split
the 2009 and 2010 budgets and pass only the former immediately; that would give
it another six months to thoroughly scrutinize the 2010 proposal.
Second, it could actually go through the 2010 budget looking for places to cut
instead of places to add, because there are many places where expenditures could
be cut without harming vital needs such as education and defense.
To cite just a few examples: Why is the government spending tens, if not
hundreds, of millions of shekels a year to run the country's only two national
radio stations? (The actual sum is unknowable, since Army Radio falls under the
defense budget, which is classified.) In a modern democracy, there is no
justification for the government having a monopoly on national radio. Moreover,
airwaves are valuable commodities. Hence not only could the government save
money by privatizing these stations, it could earn money by auctioning them off.
Why are army officers doing purely civilian jobs - engineers and economists, for
instance - allowed to retire with full pension while still in their 40s? For
combat officers, an early retirement age makes sense: These officers must be in
peak physical condition, and few people in their 50s and 60s retain that level
of fitness. But engineers and economists in the civilian world work well into
their 60s, and there is no reason why their counterparts in the defense
establishment could not do the same. This would save millions, if not billions,
in completely unwarranted pension expenditures (again, since the defense budget
is classified, the actual sum is indeterminable).
Why is the state funding haredi schools that refuse to teach core curriculum
subjects such as English, science and math? There is no reason for the
government to subsidize schools that, by failing to prepare students for the
modern job market, encourage lifetime dependency on government handouts - and,
even worse, teach their students to view such dependency as the ideal. Parents
could still send their children to such schools, just not on the taxpayer's
dime. This, too, would save tens or even hundreds of millions of shekels in
completely unjustified outlays.
Clearly, this job should have been done by those who prepared the budget; that
it was not is greatly to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's discredit. But with
the government having punted, only the Knesset remains.
Knesset members frequently complain about the legislature's dismal image; it is
the branch of government for which the population consistently expresses the
most disdain.
That, however, is precisely because MKs so often prefer engaging in
headline-grabbing, irresponsible rhetoric to doing the job they are paid to do:
crafting serious, responsible legislation.
If instead of constantly demanding more spending with no thought for how to
finance it, MKs were to start dealing seriously with the country's threatening
debt, this would do much to rehabilitate the Knesset's image.
In short, this is Knesset members' golden opportunity. Unfortunately, I would
not bet on their seizing it.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2009 Thursday
Boston mosque's leaders are extremist
BYLINE: DENNIS HALE and CHARLES JACOBS
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 678 words
HIGHLIGHT: Right of Reply. The city's willingness to cooperate with such people
constitutes a betrayal of the local Muslim community. Dennis Hale is a member of
the Political Science Department at Boston College. Charles Jacobs is president
of Americans for Peace and Tolerance. Both headed organizations sued by ISB.
This op-ed was first was published in The Boston Globe.
Last weekend marked a milestone in the history of interfaith relations in Boston
(as noted in Michael Felsen's 'Walls and Bridges' - in Monday's Jerusalem Post).
On Friday, local Muslims, public officials, and interfaith leaders celebrated
the opening of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury - a
religious complex paid for largely by the Saudis and run by what federal
authorities describe as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some milestone! The city has helped the Wahhabi clerical establishment -
purveyors of the most intolerant religious teachings on the planet - and the
Muslim Brotherhood - genesis of all Sunni terrorist organizations - set up shop
in the Cradle of Liberty, flying a false flag of moderation. And to make matters
worse, this sad milestone is praised as a great victory for diversity and a boon
to local Muslims.
Meanwhile, those who criticize this arrangement are branded as bigots and
dragged into court, while the press and public officials ignore the links
between the leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and
Islamist hatred and terrorism. These claims are supported by tens of thousands
of pages of evidence - much of it delivered to us by the society as a result of
the discovery process triggered by their own lawsuit.
So why worry? What will the following facts portend for the future of interfaith
harmony in Boston and of the venerable and moderate Muslim community of Boston?
THE ISLAMIC Society of Boston Cultural Center offers courses from the Islamic
American University, whose vice chairman is Jamal Badawi, a trustee of the
center, and headed by Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a hate-mongering preacher from
the Gulf who has been banned from Egypt and the United States. As the spiritual
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, he praises suicide bombers, debates the
correct way to murder homosexuals, and has urged that the Jews be murdered "to
the last one."
Trustee Walid Fitahi has claimed that according to the Koran, Jews are "killers
of the Prophets," responsible for the "oppression, murder, and rape of the
worshipers of Allah." Yet Fitahi was chosen to read Koranic passages at the
ribbon-cutting ceremony.
ISB records show that the organization has both received money from and donated
money to organizations that were later investigated or shut down for terrorist
activities. Among the recipients of ISB largesse are the Benevolence
International Foundation - an Al Qaeda charity - and the recently convicted Holy
Land Foundation - a Hamas charity.
These are the people who will now be ministering to the spiritual needs of the
local Muslim community and bringing to the center preachers who share their
views.
Case in point: The ISB invited Yasir Qadhi to speak at its Cambridge mosque in
March. Qadhi is a Holocaust denier who preaches that Jews want to destroy
Muslims and that Christians are theologically "filthy." An earlier ISB preacher,
Salah Soltan, claims that the Israelis use the skulls of Palestinian babies as
ashtrays.
Are these invitations or the warped views of Qaradawi, Fitahi, and Badawi simply
irrelevant to the future of interfaith relations in Boston? Or does the city's
willingness to cooperate with such people constitute a great betrayal of the
local Muslim community?
WHILE WE were demonstrating against this extremist leadership outside the mosque
last week, we got a chilling look at the future of diversity in Boston. One of
the imams who came over to talk with us denied the existence of slavery in the
Sudan and said that preaching death for homosexuals is an "opinion" to which
Qaradawi is "entitled." And an angry Muslim youth from the mosque informed us
that it was common knowledge that the Jews had tried to assassinate and "betray"
the prophet Mohammed. Consequently, he claimed that Jews could be discriminated
against "to some extent."
No sensible person believes that this is what multiculturalism is supposed to
mean - and it is way past time for sensible citizens to demand answers to
questions about the leaders of the new Islamic Center in Roxbury.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE NEW Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. Ignoring its
leaders' links with Islamist hatred and terrorism? (Credit: AP)
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1119 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2009 Thursday
Give us an inch, we'll settle a mile
BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 922 words
HIGHLIGHT: Why Obama is telling Israel to stop all settlement construction, even
in the settlements everyone understands we're going to keep. Rattling the Cage
When even Jimmy Carter says Gush Etzion should remain in Israeli hands, there's
no need anymore to discuss whether we're going to hold onto the large settlement
blocs, including the "new" neighborhoods of Jerusalem, in any final peace
agreement. This is territory we've insisted on in the "land swaps" we've been
negotiating with the Palestinians since Camp David. They accept the principle of
land swaps across the Green Line, the Israeli peace camp insists on it, the
Clinton and Bush administrations supported it and I have absolutely no doubt the
Obama administration supports it, too.
So why is Barack Obama and his team telling Israel to stop all settlement
construction, even in the settlements everyone understands we're going to keep,
and why does the peace camp say Obama is right?
Because the peace camp knows, like Obama knows, like everyone in the world
knows, that on the matter of settlements, if you give this country an inch, it
will take a mile.
That's what's so ridiculous about the dispute with the US over whether the Bush
administration agreed to let the Sharon government build up settlements within
certain limits: Even if such an agreement was made, we never held up our end.
How can we tell Obama to honor an unwritten pact that his predecessor made (or
didn't make) with us, when we didn't even keep our word to his predecessor?
The dispute goes back to May 2003, and it concerns whether the Bush
administration agreed that construction could continue in the settlement blocs
so long as it didn't eat up more land, and so long as the government didn't
offer financial incentives to new settlers. Ariel Sharon's chief negotiator Dov
Weissglas and George W. Bush's Middle East envoy Elliott Abrams say the US
agreed, while Bush's ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer says the US didn't.
But everybody, even Weissglas and Abrams, knows that the settlements have, of
course, eaten up more land - in the settlement blocs and beyond - since May 2003
when that unwritten agreement either was or wasn't made.
"There has been physical expansion in some places, and the Palestinian Authority
is right to object to it. Israeli settlement expansion beyond the security
fence, in areas Israel will ultimately evacuate, is a mistake," Abrams wrote in
a Washington Post op-ed in April.
Weissglas, in his interview last Friday with The Jerusalem Post's David
Horovitz, hemmed and hawed, but his message was clear. "I can't say that there
wasn't an instance here or there of building beyond construction lines, because
I don't have all the information, but in most of the settlements there certainly
wasn't," he said.
Taking Israel's side in the dispute, Abrams and Weissglas say construction
beyond those blocs since May 2003 has been minimal, and that Israel has kept
faithfully to its other commitments in the supposed agreement: not building new
settlements, not expropriating Palestinian- owned land for settlements and not
offering financial incentives to new settlers.
They're wrong, though. Israel hasn't kept those other commitments, either.
ACCORDING TO Peace Now's Settlement Watch, eight new settlements have gone up in
the West Bank since May 2003 - they're just not called settlements, they're
called "outposts."
As for expropriation of Palestinian-owned land, much of the land taken for those
eight new outposts, as well for the expansion of many of the 90-odd previously
existing outposts, is owned by Palestinians. The government didn't officially
expropriate that land - the folks at the outposts just took it, the government
let them and the IDF guarded them.
Besides, we don't need to expropriate Palestinian- owned land to build
settlements - there's plenty of Israeli "state land" in the West Bank to build
on. This is land that Palestinians claim to own but which hasn't been recognized
as such by official Israel. Meanwhile, settlement construction on state land is
proceeding as usual, no expropriations necessary.
And as for financial incentives, The Post's Tovah Lazaroff and Rebecca Anna
Stoil reported this week that the government, to this day, is offering
preferential mortgages to people who move to certain settlements, such as those
near Nablus. Those places are way, way beyond the settlement blocs and were
built for the expressed purpose of blocking Palestinian statehood.
So who are we kidding? We never kept our side of any May 2003 agreement over
settlements with the Bush administration, if there was such a thing. In the six
years since, settlement construction has eaten up an additional 2,000 dunams of
the West Bank, according to a rough estimate by Hagit Ofran of Peace Now's
Settlement Watch. So our telling Obama now that he's breaking America's word by
insisting on a real settlement freeze is just plain gall - or, as we call it
around here, chutzpa.
In principle, I would like to see construction go on within, but not beyond,
Gush Etzion, Alfei Menashe, East Talpiot and the other large settlements that we
will be keeping if and when a peace treaty is signed. But I know that in
practice, we will not respect any such limits in building over the Green Line.
Even if the Netanyahu government wanted to curtail settlement construction,
which it doesn't, the settlers would flout the government's will as they always
have and keep on building here, there, everywhere.
So Obama should hang tough. The sad thing is that even if he doesn't give us an
inch on the settlement freeze, we'll probably end up taking a mile anyway. If he
caves in and agrees to give us that inch, we'll take two miles.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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Ramallah. (Credit: AP)
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1120 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2009 Thursday
A model for emulation
BYLINE: MOSHE KAVEH
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 648 words
HIGHLIGHT: To bring Israeli talent back from overseas, we should look to the
Nefesh B'Nefesh example. The writer is president of Bar-Ilan University.
The thousands of new immigrants from the US, Canada and Britain that the Nefesh
B'Nefesh is bringing in on 14 flights this year will join the 20,000 who have
arrived from these countries since the organization was founded in 2002. Most of
these immigrant have been absorbed here with great success, providing us with
clear proof of this country's ability to draw in Jews living in the heart of
prosperous Western democracies.
These immigrants come from personal choice, not as persecuted refugees seeking
asylum - as has been the case with many who have come here since the early days
of Zionism and since the founding of the state. They bring with them an
abundance of skills, knowledge and creative resources - three-quarters of them
hold academic degrees - which will contribute to the well-being of the
collective and soon provide benefits outstripping all the costs involved in
their absorption.
They also remind us of a similar reserve that would add vitality and strength to
our society and state: the tens of thousands of Jewish academics - many of whom
are Israeli-born and outstanding graduates of Israeli universities - scattered
throughout the world.
Their immigration or return home depends, in fact, on one question alone: Will
employment to match their professional training and intellectual curiosity be
found for them here? Such work would serve as an anchor for building their lives
within our midst, with assured mutual benefits.
Ostensibly, this question can be disregarded - not solved - by dismissing those
pampered young people as "conditional" Israelis. We could say to them something
along the lines of: Don't do us any favors, we'll manage without you. Yet in
reality what's at stake is not their whims, but a pressing national need. The
State of Israel needs a serious reinforcement of academic personnel. Without
such reinforcement, we will find it very difficult to maintain our place in the
"First World" of developed countries, whether in the basic existential sense,
the economic sense and in all aspects related to quality of life.
That reinforcement is need in various financial institutions, including those
whose luster has been dimmed temporarily by the global economic crisis. It also
is clearly needed by the academic world, by institutions of research and higher
education, which are from many standpoints the breeding ground of progress and
culture.
IN RECENT YEARS, the higher education system has suffered a long line of
cutbacks by the state budget. The economic crisis has lowered the scope of
donations which had been just barely keeping the system head above water. The
results are clearly noticeable. For example, while the state's population has
doubled since 1973, the number of university positions has dropped by 20
percent. Conversely, by 2019, 2,500 senior lecturers and teachers will retire,
and little time remains to absorb their replacements. It should come as no
surprise, therefore, that under these conditions, the academic world is unable
to serve as the engine that propels Israeli society forward. At times, one fears
that it may be derailed altogether.
To handle this predicament we must imitate the heartening aliya campaign of
Nefesh B'Nefesh. Our academic world urgently needs the ongoing absorption of new
forces on an annual scale of hundreds of people.
Such an effort has a clear price tag. Adding one academic position requires an
investment ranging between $500,000-$1 million, mainly to ensure the position
recipient's ability to work. Such an effort requires a long-term plan, at least
a five-year plan, as opposed to the usual Israeli tactics of improvisation and
cutting corners. Such an effort requires close cooperation and real
self-examination by all stakeholders - the government, research universities and
all branches of industry.
Such an effort is not simple, but it is possible. Moreover, it is a national
exigency.
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GRAPHIC: Photo: A NEW arrival from the US arrives this week. (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski)
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The Jerusalem Post
July 9, 2009 Thursday
If you will it, David Grossman will bring peace
BYLINE: DANIEL DORON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 752 words
HIGHLIGHT: If only he and his fellows would formulate a new version of the
Geneva peace initiative for us to consider. The writer is director of the Israel
Center for Social and Economic Progress (ICSEP).
David Grossman, one of our finest writers, is angry. In a recent article he said
he feels Israelis accept with indifference "our stuck-up lives, devoid of all
hope..." He believes we "coddle ourselves... in anxieties, lassitude and
self-righteousness," give in to "self abnegation" and seek escape in "the sweet
stupor of nationalism, militarism and victimhood." We deny, he avers, "the
legitimate needs and just claims of the Palestinians." We refuse to understand
that reality "requires flexibility, daring and vision." We, Grossman charges,
refuse to take "any real step that will lead to a true change of consciousness,"
and bring about peace.
One could expect that Grossman, a sensitive writer and bereaved father, would
not take out his frustration over the absence of peace by a blanket condemnation
of most of the Israeli public. One would expect insights on why we have lost
"the ability to achieve peace," as he claims, and what we must do to achieve his
"true change of consciousness."
What change does he expect? Is giving in to "the legitimate needs and just
claims of the Palestinians," no matter what danger this poses to our survival,
what he has in mind? Please spell it out, dear distinguished writer. Please
teach us how to deal with the dangers that may result from your "vision" - or do
you think the possibility of a Hamas takeover in the West Bank is plain fantasy?
ONE COULD also expect that Grossman would not make do with complaining that
Israelis and Palestinians "do not really understand, deeply, what peace means,"
but would try to describe to the stiff-necked inhabitants of this land the
"option of true peace" he envisions. Is there any chance his vision would be
accepted by most Palestinians? Would it make them abandon the militant "vision'
of Hamas which most of them voted for?
This could be tested if Grossman and his fellow peace seekers - such as Shulamit
Aloni, Yossi Beilin, Yossi Sarid, Yuli Tamir, most of the Haaretz publicists and
many other prominent literary figures - would formulate an up- to-date, improved
version of the Geneva peace initiative. We could then find out what we would be
forced to give up and what kind of peace we would get in return.
Would it be a cold peace like the one with Egypt, which never misses an
opportunity to undermine the State of Israel? As importantly, we would find out
how many Palestinian and Arab leaders are willing to endorse an offer of peace
that would meet most, but not all of their "legitimate needs and just claims"
(like the right of return and a Judenrein West Bank?) as Grossman recommends.
Would it be more than the very few who were willing to endorse the Geneva
Initiative? If not, will Grossman and his ilk stop charging that we are peace
resisters because we refuse to share their well-intentioned illusions?
GROSSMAN COMPLAINS that we cannot transcend the conflict in the new peace spirit
of US President Barack Obama. He might want to consider the possibility that
this is because he and his fellow visionaries on the Left simply keep
reiterating the mantra of "peace now," while dismissing the harsh realities.
They keep ignoring the failure of all the instant peace initiatives they have
advocated, from the Oslo agreements through the Ami Ayalon- Sari Nusseibeh
"understandings," from the far-reaching concessions offered by Ehud Barak at
Camp David and Taba to the Beilin Geneva Initiative. All these overtures were
never accepted by the Palestinians, and therefore resulted only in greater
bloodshed.
Grossman and his friends must also explain why, as zealous guardians of human
rights, they seem so obsessed with Palestinian self-determination while
remaining indifferent to the Palestinians' basic human rights? Why are they
working for the establishment of what will surely become an Iran-style state led
by Hamas that will cause its citizens only increasing misery, both social and
economic?
How can they call for the establishment of a regime that will oppress women and
children, devoting all its energies to jingoism? How can they support the
creation of a state whose leaders are committed to the destruction of Israel? Is
the right of political self-determination so supreme that it trumps all else?
Only time will tell, of course, whether our "anxieties" are realistic or
imaginary, whether Grossman grasps reality or whether he indulges in fantasies.
The record seems to advise caution. If a Palestinian state is irredentist and
warlike, it will be a great tragedy for both the Palestinians and for us.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
False familiarity in Xinjiang
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 732 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
To Israeli eyes, the international media's coverage of the clashes between
Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang province has seemed relatively
non-judgmental so far. Chinese authorities are less sanguine, wondering why
rioters have been described as peaceful protesters.
Over 150 people have been killed, 1,000 wounded and 1,400 arrested in three days
of unrest. Hundreds of shops and cars have been set ablaze and parts of the city
of Urumqi look like a war zone.
Authorities insist the violence has been instigated by expatriate agitators,
pointing specifically to the German- based World Uighur Congress, and to a
Washington-area activist named Rebiya Kadeer.
The Uighurs (pronounced Wee-gurs) are ethnically and religiously tied to the
Turkic-speaking region of the former Soviet Union. They complain that the
Chinese government limits their freedom to practice Islam. Radical Islam has
made inroads in Xinjiang; 20 Uighurs have been captured by US forces in
Afghanistan.
The ethnic Han, who dominate China, view Xinjiang as not only geo-strategically
essential, but vital because of its oil and gas reserves. The central government
encourages Han people to settle in Xinjiang. Once there, they live mostly
segregated from the Uighur majority.
A deadly brawl last month between Han and Uighur factory workers, followed by
rumors of reprisals, ignited the latest surge of unrest. Muslim mobs chanting
"God is great" have confronted security forces, while club-wielding Han
counter-demonstrators, fuming because they feel police are not doing enough to
protect them, tried marching on a mosque yesterday before being dispersed by
police.
THE XINJIANG unrest caught most consumers of news unprepared and unable to form
instant opinions.
Until 1977, when Deng Xiaoping began the still ongoing process of transforming
China into a more open society, foreign journalists were not even permitted into
the region. But when the latest violence erupted, 24/7 cable news coverage
kicked-in, as did reporting by the prestige press and wire services. Still,
viewers and readers were mostly unfamiliar with the "back story."
What they now "know" - having seen the images - is that heavily armed Chinese
police backed by truck-mounted water-cannons confronted demonstrators, who
included women and children. They "saw" a lone, elderly woman, leaning on a
cane, facing down an armored truck of the paramilitary People's Armed Police;
they "witnessed" unidentified victims of the violence hospitalized on
life-support, and a child with a head wound reportedly shot while "holding the
hand of his pregnant mother when she [too] was shot."
So which will have the lasting impact - the above images, or the assertion by
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang that what has been going on in
Xinjiang is "not a peaceful protest, but evil killing, fire-setting and
looting"?
The Uighurs claim they have engaged in peaceful protest only to have been set
upon by security forces. Qin says they are turning "black into white in an
attempt to mislead the public."
The Chinese seem to appreciate that emotive images are overpowering their
explanations. So they've gone on the PR offensive, escorting foreign journalists
to Urumqi to "see for themselves." They have concurrently shut down cell phone
networks and Internet access to keep the Uighurs' message from getting out, and
to obstruct their ability to organize.
But the Internet age makes it basically impossible to seal a country
hermetically, or manage the flow of news.
JUST about anyone with a computer or a television has a firm opinion about "what
Israel must do" to address Palestinian grievances. Familiarity, even if rooted
in ignorance, makes everyone an instant expert. The Xinjiang unrest, bringing
new players into the media spotlight, leaves most people more befuddled than
opinionated, though not averse to blaming the authorities by default.
The side that wears uniforms is always at a public relations disadvantage when
it is confronted by images of wailing women and children in traditional garb. In
days, some media coverage has planted the germ of the idea that Xinjiang is East
Turkestan.
We Israelis might want to recall Xinjiang the next time we feel the world media
is being uniquely harsh on us. And perhaps a more humble Chinese leadership will
reflect on how easy it is to turn "black into white" before jumping on the
anti-Israel bandwagon.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
The alphabet of life
BYLINE: DAVID KLINGHOFFER
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 975 words
HIGHLIGHT: DNA refers to the letters of a genetic 'alphabet' that in the correct
combinations encode the diversity of all life forms. Kabbala too speaks of such
an alphabet, comprised of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, via which God
continually speaks the world into existence. The writer, a senior fellow at the
Discovery Institute in Seattle, writes the Kingdom of Priests blog at Beliefnet
(blog.beliefnet.com/kingdomofpriests).
DNA are three letters full of paradox. What they represent remains little
understood by the public, yet they are on everyone's tongue. Amid the chatter of
popular culture, the truth gets lost that DNA is one of the most powerful clues
we have of the existence of a spiritual reality, maybe to the existence of God.
An acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA refers to the form taken by the
biological information that directs the production of proteins and other cell
components. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick famously described its
double-helix shape. The information thus encoded, the genome, influences how a
living organism's body gets constructed, though how far this goes, and how it
works, are questions that remain obscure.
We talk about DNA as familiarly as we do the USA. The idea that your genes
determine your susceptibility to diseases and addictions is a stock theme of
popular health discussions. On TV cop shows, law-enforcement officials are
constantly using DNA to solve cases, whether new or "cold" - as real police do.
For a fee, DNA testing can shed light on anyone's genetic ancestry, including
whether you have "Jewish genes." There is supposed to be a "God gene" for
religious belief in general. And a "gay gene." And so on.
But all this is trivial compared to the largely unheralded insight gained from
the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003. The insight is disturbing. It is
that while DNA codes for the cell's building blocks, the information needed to
build the rest of the creature is seemingly, in large measure, absent.
CONSIDER THE HOX "master" genes that supposedly determine the spatial
configuration of the front and back ends of creatures as diverse as frogs, mice
and humans. As British physician James Le Fanu writes in a fascinating new book,
Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves (Pantheon), Swiss
biologist Walter Gehring showed that "the same 'master' genes mastermind the
three- dimensional structures of all living things... The same master genes that
cause a fly to have the form of a fly cause a mouse to have the form of a
mouse." The physically encoded information to form that mouse, as opposed to
that fly, isn't there. Instead, "It is as if the 'idea' of the fly (or any other
organism) must somehow permeate the genome that gives rise to it."
Such an understanding, of nature driven by a force outside nature, was dominant
in biology before Darwin. Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), director of Paris's
Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, held that there was an unknown biological "formative
impulse," an organizational principle of some kind that directed the formation
of diverse kinds of life.
The concept goes still further back. Much further. What Cuvier called the
"formative impulse," was called God's "wisdom" by the rabbis. The Bible teaches,
"The Lord founded the earth with wisdom" (Proverbs 3:19).
WITH DNA, there is, in one sense, less there than meets the eye. But in another
sense, there is much more. For if DNA can't entirely account for the way bodies
are put together, there remains something deeply suggestive about the fact that
curled at the heart of every cell there lies a code. How did it get there?
A staple of media coverage of DNA is the story, repeated endlessly, about some
scientist or other who's the latest to synthesize molecular precursors of DNA
(or its genetic partner, RNA), thus purportedly showing how biological
information could have arisen on Earth unaided. The problem with these
demonstrations is that they always depend on intelligent guidance, that of the
scientist in his lab, thus suggesting the very opposite lesson of the one
intended.
In another new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent
Design (HarperOne), my colleague Stephen Meyer, a Cambridge University-trained
philosopher of science, reminds us of the failure of every avenue by which
science has tried to explain the origin of the genetic information required for
the first life. Explanations depending on unguided material processes alone
usually founder on a chicken-or-the-egg paradox: notably, that "specified
information in DNA codes for proteins, but specific proteins are necessary to
transcribe and translate the information on the DNA molecule."
DNA acts like a computer code, or like a language consisting of letters and
words, arranged in specific sequences to accomplish a specific task or convey a
specific meaning. As Dr. Meyer observes, the only kind of source we know of that
can produce a "functionally integrated information-processing system" like that
in the cell is an intelligent source.
As a Jew, I find it intriguing, at the very least, that Jewish tradition
anticipated precisely the kind of evidence that Meyer deals with in his book.
DNA refers to the letters of a genetic "alphabet" that in the correct
combinations encode the diversity of all life forms. Kabbala too speaks of such
an alphabet, comprised of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, with which God
continually speaks the world into existence.
Different combinations of letters produce different creatures. A century and a
half before Watson and Crick, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi sought to make
Kabbala accessible to ordinary readers. In the Tanya (1796), he writes of how
"the creatures are divided into categories [both] general and particular by
changes in the combinations, substitutions and transpositions [of the letters]."
Something is out there beyond nature, guiding the destinies of living creatures.
Whether we think of it as God or some other unknown agent makes a big
difference. But the progress of science from imagining existence as a purely
material affair, without purpose, as Darwinian evolution still portrays the
matter, to the more advanced description toward which biology increasingly
points, is a major step in the right direction.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
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GRAPHIC: Drawing: Curled at the heart of every cell is a code. How did it get
there?
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
Matrilineality is still best for Jewish identity
BYLINE: RAYMOND APPLE
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 496 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer is emeritus rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Sydney,
Australia.
In recent polling, about half of the Israeli population (but not the Orthodox)
advocated allowing Jewish identity to follow either parent. This contrasts with
the traditional definition whereby Jewish descent depends on the mother.
In early biblical times the criterion was beit av, "the father's house" (Exodus
1:1, Numbers 3:2), but this was superseded by the matrilineal principle, derived
from a midrash halacha on Deuteronomy 7:3-4 which refers to "your son" as the
child of an Israelite mother - a rule accepted by all halachic authorities
(Kiddushin 65b/68b, Yad Issurei Bi'ah 15:4, Shulhan Aruch E.H. 8:5). The change
was not unexpected, since the Bible already spoke of not only a father's but a
mother's house: In Exodus 1:21, God rewards women's piety by "making them
houses," and Ruth 4:11 states that Rachel and Leah "built the house of Israel."
It could be that there was an early stage of fluidity, but when the exiles
returned from Babylon they saw the influence of "foreign wives" and encouraged
Ezra (10:2-4, 9:11) to make rulings against outmarriage and the easy acceptance
of "the daughters of strange gods." Ezra claimed to be following prophetic
teaching, though the sages did not list the negative status of gentile wives
among Ezra's or the prophets' enactments.
George Foot Moore in his Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era
(1927, vol. 1, page 20) finds a parallel in Greek history at the same time as
Ezra, when Pericles restricted Athenian citizenship to the child of an Athenian
man and an Athenian woman. We do not know whether Ezra saw this as a precedent,
but he must have been aware of it.
Solomon Zeitlin (Jewish Quarterly Review 51:2, 1960, pages 135-140) thinks the
ruling is a response to the provocative action of Sanballat in marrying his
daughter to a son of the Jewish high priest. According to Zeitlin, Judaism had
to block the child of a non-Jewess from being a Jew or a priest.
Matrilineality took time to become entrenched, but by the time of the Mishna
(Kiddushin 3:12) it was accepted that a child follows its mother's status, and
the sages interpreted Jacob's blessing, "The Lord make you as Ephraim and
Manasseh" (Genesis 49:20) to aver that the boys' mother was not a gentile but
the daughter of Dinah, sister of Joseph.
In the Roman period there were so many conversions and semi-conversions to
Judaism that there needed to be a clear definition of Jewish status; otherwise,
according to Lawrence Schiffman (Who Was a Jew?, 1985, ch. 2), Judaism would
have been swamped by the children of gentile Christian mothers.
Rabbinic Judaism is unyielding in maintaining matrilineality. Lord Jakobovits
(The Timely and the Timeless, 1977, pages 198-217) says the certainty of
maternity must be set against the possible doubt of paternity. Even in nature
the mother's bond with the child is firmer than the father's. And the mother has
the superior influence on the child's religious development.
So matrilineality is here to stay.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
More hunger for Hamsun
BYLINE: ASGEIR UELAND
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 756 words
HIGHLIGHT: Jewish writers in Hebrew and Yiddish were among those strongly
influenced by the controversial Norwegian's books. Right of Reply. The writer is
a Norwegian who lived and worked in the Middle East for 11 years.
Norway's commemoration of the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun's birth has made
Rafael Medoff question that country's role as chairman of an international task
force for Holocaust education ("A tale of two Norwegian Nobel Prize winners for
Literature," June 30).
There is no doubt whatsoever that the author had very strong sympathies toward
Germany and German culture per se, and later toward the Nazi regime.
Born in 1859, Hamsun was 81 when the Germans attacked and occupied Norway on
April 9, 1940. In an infamous piece in the newspaper Aftenposten, he wrote that
the Norwegians should lay down their arms and welcome the Germans. Yes, Hamsun
was pro-Nazi, and even met Hitler and Goebbels, but there is next to nothing in
his books that points toward a hatred for Jews. He was a collaborator with an
occupying regime, but there is nothing to prove that the old man had the
faintest idea that by 1942 Nazi Germany had set out on the path of the
industrial destruction of the European Jewry.
While Hamsun may be guilty as charged for being pro- Nazi stand and for
collaborating with the enemy, does that nullify the achievement of his work? In
his article Medoff presents Hamsun's masterpiece Growth of the Soil as one of
the favorite books of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. It might very
well be that Goebbels liked the novel, but so did many others - among them Jews.
In fact the novel, which tells the story of Isak, who built his own farm out of
nothing, was very popular among kibbutz members before and after World War II.
Many of Hamsun's other works, such as Hunger and Pan, were translated into
Hebrew from 1922 onward.
Hamsun also had a profound influence on several authors who operated in the now
sadly fading genre of Yiddish literature. In 1967 Isaac Bashevis Singer said of
the author: "The whole school of fiction in the 20th century stems from Hamsun."
And Singer was totally aware of the stands Hamsun had taken during the war.
Another Yiddish author who took heed of the writings of Hamsun is the now mainly
forgotten Israel Rabon, whose brilliant novel Di Gas (The Street) is more or
less a homage to Hunger. It is also said that Hamsun was a major influence on
Israeli Nobel laureate Shai Agnon.
Even today Hamsun's books are readily available in Hebrew, especially Hunger
(Ra'av), Pan, Victoria and Growth of the Soil (Birkat Ha'adama). Thus it wasn't
only the Nazis who found Hamsun's literature exciting and renewing.
THIS BRINGS to the fore once again the old question of whether art can be
admired for art's sake, apart from the life and actions of the artist. Had
Hamsun written literature filled with anti-Semitism, I have no doubt he would
have been all but forgotten. He didn't and hence his legacy as an author lingers
on.
There are, of course, questions to be asked regarding if it is right to
commemorate Hamsun. I do not for one moment think what he did during the
occupation should be defended. Hamsun was clearly wrong regarding his view of
the Nazis. That is precisely why the debate regarding his position is very much
alive in his native Norway. The debate will probably carry on for a few more
decades, since most people still have a schizophrenic view of him: they love his
literature, but are aware of the mistakes he made in the dusk of his life.
That Norway has now opened a center for him is in some ways understandable;
barring Henrik Ibsen, he is the most known Norwegian author in the world. His
works are still read, and hence it would be wrong not to carry on studying them
and presenting his life (and his misdeeds) to a wider audience. There is only
the slimmest of chances that he will ever become a modern icon for right-wing
radicals or, worse, neo-Nazis.
That Norway has been willing to take the chairmanship of the international task
force on Holocaust education should not be intertwined with Hamsun's life and
work. In a famous poem Hamsun once stated that "in a hundred years all will be
forgotten." This is the real danger of the Holocaust today. The real danger is
that it will be forgotten, or largely played down - apart from in the Jewish
communities in the Diaspora and in Israel - when popular memory of World War II
gradually fades away.
That is exactly why one needs to teach new generations about the extermination
of European Jewry. If Norway is willing to put money into that project, it
should be welcomed rather than questioned. The real issue is how to educate new
generations about the Holocaust, and that is far more important than Hamsun's
wrong turn late in life.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: KNUT HAMSUN. Had he written literature that was filled with
anti-Semitism, he would have been all but forgotten.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
Letters
BYLINE: Marcella Wachtel, Marchal Kaplan. Morton A. Klein, Isidore Solomons,
Chana Pinto, M. Hagenauer, Andrew Pfefferman, Barry Lynn
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1179 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
Simply an outrage
Sir, - "Ethiopian victim of rabbi's road rage has conversion revoked" (July 7)
was so hard to believe, I kept looking for what I was missing.
The yeshiva student/rabbi aspiring to become a rabbinical judge 1. tried to
leave a parking lot without paying; 2. drove deliberately into the victim, N.;
and 3. denied his vicious crime until he was confronted with the video
documenting it.
Why would such a criminal be considered for any post where his judgment would
affect another person?
If, sometime in the future, N. is found to have hidden damage due to trauma, NIS
10,000 will not take her very far. The fact that she accepted the perpetrator's
apology - after he drove into her, lifted her onto the hood of his car and
carried her 15 meters before she was thrown to the ground - may possibly solve
her immediate problem (I wonder if she was pressured into this acceptance and
already regrets it); but what about this "judge's" future clients? Who can
expect justice from a law-breaker, a thief and a liar?
Most infuriating is that in a move to further discredit thevictim - with 321
pages whitewashing the criminal rabbi's sin by arguing for the importance of
implementing Halacha in the civil court system - the State Conversion Authority
has revoked her conversion.
This offender deserved more punishment than a fine and 150 hours of public
service. Ordinary citizens, those without letters of recommendation from Rabbis
Shlomo Amar and Ovadia Yosef, go to jail.
If N. was married to a non-Jew at the time of her conversion, the rules say the
conversion should be revoked. If not, the conversion authority needs to justify
this revocation and prove it was not taken to punish N., nor to intimidate her.
MARCELLA WACHTEL
Jerusalem
Sir, - I am really getting tired of your identifying wrongdoers as "haredi."
It's happened twice this week, the last time on July 6, when in "Fake rabbi
persuaded teen to have sex" you managed to apply that adjective to the
individual under discussion.
A thorough and constant search of the Post never reveals similar appellations
such as "secular," "religious Muslim" or "black" applied to some miscreant.
Why needlessly inflame the already existing antagonism between religious and
non-religious in this country?
MARCHAL KAPLAN
Jerusalem
Sticks and stones
may break my bones...
Sir, - Congressman Robert Wexler is reported as arguing that Israel should agree
to a freeze on Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem
because it would call the Palestinians' "bluff" ("Israel will say 'yes' to
settlement freeze," Wexler tells 'Post,'" July 2).
The Palestinians' "bluff" has been called repeatedly; they have been tested
repeatedly for nearly 16 years, and failed the test every time.
Israel's first concession was "Gaza and Jericho First" (1993) to see if Yasser
Arafat and Fatah would live up to their commitments. They didn't, yet Israel
kept conceding.
With each new agreement, Israel gave away more territory, made more "goodwill
gestures" such as freeing terrorists and handed over money, assets and even arms
to the Palestinian Authority, only to get more terrorism and incitement to
hatred and murder in return.
Israel even unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, uprooting thousands of Jews
from their homes - only to get increased rocket fire and more terror attacks.
MORTON A. KLEIN
Zionist Organization of America
New York
...but words will
never hurt me?
Sir, - Re "'Legal war' against Israel has defense establishment scrambling"
(July 3): One of the reasons given by those who urge Israel to be magnanimous
and "take a chance for peace" is that Israel is the most powerful state in the
Middle East, with the most powerful army. And that if a peace agreement with the
PLO goes sour, it can defend itself.
However, the ongoing attack against Israel by so many so-called peace-loving and
humanitarian NGOs; the contrived anti-Israel demonstrations across the world;
the boycott demands during and after the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast
Lead - when Israel did defend itself against outrageous attacks by terrorist
organizations - all make nonsense of that argument.
Israel is under attack not only by terrorists using guns, but by terrorists
using the courts - both of law and of public opinion. In other words, Israel can
"take a chance for peace" only if it is willing to defend itself with both hands
tied behind its back.
When Britain's Prince Harry, a British army officer, returned from service in
Afghanistan, he said, succinctly and quite properly: "Your first job is to save
your own guys. If you've got to drop the bomb, you drop the bomb."
ISIDORE SOLOMONS
Beit Shemesh
Before the 'occupation'
Sir, - Thank you for running Tilman Tarach's "Why a two-state solution?" (July
7). Effectively highlighting the widespread misconceptions about the
Palestinians' claims to a state, it should be printed in every major newspaper
worldwide.
Why didn't anyone complain about any "occupation" between 1948 and 1967, when
Jordan and Egypt controlled the West Bank and Gaza, respectively? Because the
claim to statehood was, and still is a farce hiding the real truth - that the
Palestinians (and, seemingly, all our Arab neighbors) do not want a Jewish
country, or even a Jewish nation to exist.
CHANA PINTO
Ra'anana
Seeing is believing?
Sir, - Re "Rabbi competes on Turkish reality show with other clerics to convert
atheists" (July 6): What a great idea!
I disagree with the comments by several types of religious authorities that this
is making light of an important and deep issue: faith. Finding the right
marriage partner is also crucial, and yet in many countries it is done via
TV-contest format.
The lightness of this format is its greatest strength. What a great opportunity
for these philosophies of life to explain their substance in a pleasant and easy
form.
M. HAGENAUER
Jerusalem
No bin? Take it home
Sir, - I made aliya from Australia almost 12 months ago. I love this country
with a passion which is indescribable. As a member of the Shoah second
generation, I have an unshaken belief that Israel must and will survive.
Moving to this small land was not without its difficulties, such as the
language, cultural differences and aggressive nature of life here. But these I
can take in my stride.
What I find intolerable is the way some citizens treat their surroundings as a
personal dumping ground. Our beaches and parks after Shabbat look more like a
council waste depot than the beautiful areas they were before the day of rest.
I cannot comprehend this wanton desecration of our beautiful country. People, if
you can't find a bin in close proximity, take your garbage home with you. It's
really not that difficult ("Environment Ministry offers funds to local
authorities for recycling factories," June 29).
ANDREW PFEFFERMAN
Netanya
Think positive
Sir, - Your headline screamed: "Netanyahu bows to pressure, cancels tax on
produce" (July 7). Couldn't it have been "Netanyahu reverses course, says no new
taxes on produce"?
Things are difficult enough. How about a positive slant to brighten our day?
BARRY LYNN
Efrat Barry
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
Remembering Michael Jackson
BYLINE: JENNI MICHELE HANDEL
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 862 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer is an independent marketing writer and consultant,
specializing in special events and fundraising activities, mostly for non-profit
organizations.
It was 1984, I had just graduated college. A very focused and determined 21 year
old, I was hopeful that even without any contacts my degree in journalism would
land me a position in the entertainment industry. Not wanting to be a starving
actress on the streets of New York, I pursued a career in publicity.
A child of the '70s, I was a television baby, nursed on The Partridge Family,
The Osmonds and of course The Jackson Five. But as a teenager, I became so much
more sophisticated. No longer a screaming fan, I considered myself a connoisseur
of good music. Naturally, I was head over heels infatuated with Michael
Jackson's Off the Wall.
Upon graduation I received many gifts from friends bearing the I Love Michael
Jackson insignia. I had three goals then: (1) to work in the entertainment
industry, (2) to meet Michael Jackson and attend the Grammy Awards and (3) to
make a difference in the world. The good the entertainment industry could do was
enormous, so I thought. I had to be involved. I was naive. Four years later, I
would see just how much.
Michael Jackson was a client of the PR firm I began working for after
graduation. Friends and family never understood exactly what I did in publicity,
but they all thought my life was glamorous. I sported a wardrobe of
jeans/sweatshirts and long flowing gowns and fashionable evening wear. By day, I
worked in an office that was reminiscent of a refurbished stock room: old desks,
chairs and typewriters. By night, dressed to the nines, we worked at the
fanciest hotels, nightspots and restaurants, hanging out with journalists,
photographers and celebrities.
My client base ran the gamut from the silliest to the hottest. Learning how to
pitch a story, develop an angle, meet and greet VIPs and organize big events are
definitely skills I appreciate and continue to use today. Yet the lesson I
learned from Michael Jackson allowed me to live my much simpler, humbler and
more spiritual life in Israel today.
IT WAS 1988. I was turning 25, and my dreams were coming true. My 25th birthday
would be sandwiched between the Grammys at Radio City Music Hall, where Michael
would sing "Man in the Mirror," and his solo concert two days later at Madison
Square Garden. I would be working both events! I was the envy of all my friends.
My coworkers and I were responsible for all the logistics of the event and
publicity for the show. The hottest tickets in town were press credentials for
backstage and the coveted invitations to the post-Grammy party. We distributed
both sparingly and discriminately to media outlets from around the world.
At the Grammys, Michael was amazing. "Man in the Mirror" was an inspiring
performance. On stage level, I watched Michael with Diana Ross. Diana was
beaming like a mother watching her "child" in his glory. When the number ended,
Michael was whisked off stage toward us. Smaller than I imagined and thinner
than seemed possible, Michael remained still, frozen. What to do next, where to
go, those decisions were for the mortals around him.
In that moment I saw my hero, a man surrounded by people and yet very much
alone, isolated. When Michael sang "If you want to make the world a better
place, take a look at yourself, then make a change," the audience was
electrified, energized, empowered. Yet backstage, all that seemed to matter was
whether Michael would win the Grammy. He didn't. Michael left the stage. I felt
a deep sadness. Could I feel bad for a superstar?
Next night at his concert, Grammy winner or not, Michael was a star. The press
arrived early, strategically positioning themselves. There were lots of requests
to fill, problems to solve and changes to be made. Lots of hard work and not
much fun.
The night was over. I had made it. Or had I? I had worked the Grammy Awards,
surrounded by more famous people in one night than I could have ever imagined.
Michael Jackson's concert was amazing, but as my coworker remarked, "One day I
just want to buy a ticket like everyone else and sit comfortably (not stand) and
watch a concert." The excitement was real but the performer was not. Enclosed
within a straitjacket of celebrity, Michael was a product not a person. The goal
of making a difference didn't seem nearly as important as making an impression.
Where was the meaning in that?
A year later, I decided to pack it all in. I came to Israel for the first time.
When I told my bosses I would be gone for three months, they not only gave me a
leave of absence but a bracha as well. "Israel," they said, "is real. There is
no other country like it. Enjoy."
Off the plane I felt like I was no longer in Oz but in Kansas. I had arrived
home. I found the life in Israel simpler yet more meaningful. I found the people
determined and committed, passionate and alive. I began to meet true heroes,
individuals who actually were looking at the "man in the mirror," making real
changes in their lives, and making the world a better place.
While it took a few years, Israel is now my home, birthplace of my children.
Away from the limelight, I believe I am finally achieving my third goal, to make
a difference, in the lives of my children, the Jewish people and the Land of
Israel.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
Good-bye, finally, to Iraq's cities
BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 753 words
HIGHLIGHT: Taking responsibility for them discredited George W. Bush and swept
the furthest left-wing politician ever to the presidency. LION'S DEN. The writer
is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at
the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
American forces departed Iraqi cities last week - to parades, fireworks and
chants of "Out, America, Out!" and "America has left! Baghdad is victorious!"
They left under a Status of Forces Agreement reached in November 2008
stipulating their "withdrawal from cities, towns and villages" by June 30, 2009.
In addition, by December 31, 2011, "all US forces are to withdraw from all Iraqi
territory, water and airspace." The SOFA also grants Baghdad control over
American military operations, and it defines the US role in such areas as Iraq's
economy and education.
Some urban US fortifications were turned over to Iraqis, others razed. As Capt.
Andrew Roher put it, while standing on a commercial street in central Baghdad,
watching his small base being obliterated, "Leave no trace is the goal."
American troops have moved to tent and plywood "installations" (don't call them
"bases") outside the cities.
These changes signify, in short, that the Iraqis, despite six-plus years of
US-led occupation and their still requiring substantial US support, are
more-or-less finally running their own country.
FOR ME, the American move to the countryside comes six years too late. Already
in a 2003 article, "Let Iraqis run Iraq," I advised: "Turn power over to the
Iraqis. Let them form a government... Take coalition forces off their patrols of
city streets and away from protecting buildings, and put them in desert bases."
Washington's long delay has cost Americans heavily, starting with thousands dead
and hundreds of billions of dollars, then going on to poisoning American
politics. Tying American interests to the welfare of urban Iraqis shattered the
post-9/11 "united we stand" solidarity and replaced it with the country's most
fractious and vicious debate since the Vietnam War.
Worse, occupying Iraqi cities has a yet-incalculable but frightening long-term
impact. More than any other factor, taking responsibility for Iraqi cities
discredited George W. Bush and built the groundswell of support that swept the
furthest left-wing politician ever to the presidency. Barack Obama's first
half-year in office suggests that he aspires to make fundamental changes in the
relationship of state and society; in this sense, Americans for many decades
will likely pay for mistakes made in Iraq.
AND WHAT about the impact of the occupation on Iraqis? As Ernesto Londo-o of The
Washington Post notes, two questions haunted US troops as they prepared for the
June 30 pullout: How will Iraqi forces behave after they leave? Will the
American lives and treasury spent to prop up and legitimize the Iraqi government
prove to have been a good investment? I am pessimistic, seeing Iraq as a
historically violent country yet emerging from the Stalinist nightmare of Saddam
Hussein, a place replete with corruption, tension, hatred and desire for
revenge. Having American troops around for six years temporarily contained the
pressures but will barely ameliorate the country's fate.
Many Iraqis agree. "When the Americans leave, everything will be looted because
no one will be watching," says an Iraqi army lieutenant. "There will be a civil
war - without a doubt," predicts an interpreter. No one pays attention to the
bouncy messages of hope and reconciliation forwarded in Iraq with US taxpayer
monies. "Iraq is like a baby right now. It needs people to look after it," said
the chairman of a local security council.
A Shi'ite legislator, Qassim Daoud, openly calls for American troops to remain
until 2020 or 2025. But the troops are inexorably leaving and, I predict, the
massive American effort will rapidly dissolve, fail and be forgotten. Iraqis
will deal poorly with such problems as terrorism, Sunni-Shi'ite tensions,
Kurdish autonomy, Islamist ambitions, disappearing Christians, a fragile Mosul
Dam and an obsolete oil and gas infrastructure. Civil war remains a live
prospect as sectarian fighting returns. Current evidence indicates that Iraqis
cannot even maintain their billions of dollars worth of US-donated military
equipment.
As an American, I say good luck to Iraq but good riddance to US control of its
cities, good-bye to oversight of the economy and schools, farewell to worrying
about intertribal relations and the Mosul Dam, and adieu to responsibility for
terrorists and their victims.
Ironically, while occupation of Iraqi cities did deep and lasting damage to the
United States, its beneficial impact on Iraq will likely be superficial and
transient. In all, a painful waste of resources is winding down none too soon.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
Do not call me
BYLINE: AMNON RUBINSTEIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 449 words
HIGHLIGHT: Refusing to answer a student's query testifies to the depth of hatred
which motivates the Irish boycott. The writer is a Professor of Law at the
Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel), a former Minister of Education and
Knesset Member, as well as the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law
[www.amnonrubinstein.org].
A student of mine in a class on multiculturalism was writing a paper on Hispanic
culture in the U.S. The definitive article on the subject was published by Prof.
David Branwell of the National University of Ireland, so my student e-mailed
Branwell asking whether his position on bilingual education in America remained
unaltered, to which the professor replied:
"I am sorry, we imposed an academic boycott of Israel at the time of the Israeli
invasion of Gaza."
I, too, have e-mailed Branwell asking about the body imposing the boycott and
whether there are any conditions under which it would end. I am still waiting
for a reply - unless the boycott applies also to relevant information about it.
There are of course all the other unanswered questions: where were the Irish
professors when Israel's civilians were constantly bombarded for eight painful
years from within Gaza? And where are they now with regard to Gilad Schalit -
against whom a variety of war crimes are being perpetrated? But to me the fact
that a distinguished professor refuses to answer a student's query is the best
evidence of the noxious nature of these boycotts: not only are they one-sided
and bigoted, but the very concept of an academic boycott is an oxymoron. The
whole idea of academic freedom is of a free exchange of knowledge and
information; refusing to answer a student's query testifies to the depth of
hatred which motivates the Irish boycott. This fact of life is not made any
easier by the knowledge that Jews and Israelis are part of this hate campaign.
Indeed, one cannot think of any other country - including brutal dictatorships -
against which such an unmitigated campaign of venom is being conducted.
SHOULD ISRAEL respond to such boycotts? Or should it relegate them to the
dustbin of the history of prejudice? Reacting to the boycott may draw attention
to its perpetrators but doing nothing may encourage the spread of this
phenomenon. Perhaps the best, and natural, response is to cut off academic ties
with any institution of higher learning which adopts a boycott policy against
Israeli academics: "If you don't want to speak to me, I will not speak to you."
This response should not be initiated by the government as this truly is an
academic matter. Instead, it should be undertaken by the universities themselves
or through the council of higher education. Names of institutions and academics
who participate in this boycott should be published, so that they not be invited
to conferences in Israel or enjoy other benefits of academic co-operation with
Israeli scholars and institutions of higher learning. Indeed, my personal
response to the boycotters is: Don't call me, and I won't call you.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 8, 2009 Wednesday
Begging for internationalization
BYLINE: SETH J. FRANTZMAN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 757 words
HIGHLIGHT: Rather than courting voters with reasonable solutions, some on the
Left simply ignore them and ask foreigners to do the job. TERRA INCOGNITA. The
writer is a PhD student in geography at the Hebrew University and runs the Terra
Incognita blog.
The ever-present calls from within Israeli society for "greater international
involvement and pressure" on the country are emblematic of a contempt for
democracy. Some on the intellectual Left want to see themselves as canaries in a
coal mine, warning the state of its coming destruction. One corollary of this
endless struggle to be the "lone voice of reason" is the tendency to insist on
greater international pressure.
Just after Israel's 2009 elections, Prof. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University
declared it was time for the US under Barack Obama to impose a solution on
Israel, and "if such intervention includes sanctions, it is the only way to
secure Israel's existence in the long run." The latest manifestation of this was
Haaretz political columnist Akiva Eldar's June 29 call for Obama to "play on
Israel's fears, not its hopes for peace.... The time has come for him to
directly address the Israelis, bypassing their leadership."
Sometimes the interest in international pressure can be downright crude, as when
Haaretz editor David Landau told Condoleezza Rice in September 2007 that he
believed the US needed to "rape" Israel. According to reports he "referred to
Israel as a 'failed state' politically, one in need of a US-imposed settlement."
The belief that international pressure is a godsend is quite widespread. A
February 2009 petition signed by five academics, including Prof. Rachel Giora
and Eva Yablonka of Tel Aviv University, in support of a recent anti-Israel
motion at Manchester University, noted that "we strongly believe that without
some pressure from outside Israel and without concrete support for Palestinians
nothing will change in our part of the world."
In a similar vein, on April 3, Naomi Chazan wrote in the Upfront weekend
magazine of The Jerusalem Post that "a much more assertive international
involvement is therefore necessary... the threat of isolation verging on
ostracism may be precisely the kind of jolt that has been needed for some
time... such an externally driven impetus can also revitalize domestic
politics."
INSISTENCE on the overbearing involvement of the international community, and
the trust and reliance on its decisions, is indicative of a severe distrust of
Israeli democracy. Those on the Left who call for this have declared that while
they acknowledge the failure of their political parties in 2009, they need
foreigners to impose a solution. This has long been typical of fringe groups
such as Yesh Gvul, which try to get Israelis indicted abroad for "war crimes"
because courts here will not do their bidding.
The apparent reason behind the call for international intervention is the
feeling that the leftist parties have failed. Ze'ev Sternhell, Israel Prize
winner and controversial professor, says that Labor has lost its purpose.
Describing the disillusionment with Labor he notes: "The real problem is that
the Israeli Left is an artificial, even a false, Left. It lacks every one of the
instinctive responses that are identified with the natural Left - standing with
the weak, the oppressed and the working poor against the strong and the state
itself."
For Israel Harel, another columnist, the Left failed because of its inability to
achieve peace when given the chance and the "overidentification of this public
with Arab-Palestinian nationalism." It's no surprise therefore that Zehava
Gal-On, formerly a Meretz MK, has been described by Haaretz as the "last
leftist" among a Left with "no clear message... no edge."
In turning to outsiders, these voices are anti- democrats. It is interesting
that some of the country's elite would trust the same nations who perpetrated
the Holocaust to be fair arbitrators of the current conflict. They are
continually embarrassed by their countrymen, most recently Foreign Minister
Avigdor Lieberman. This is a mistake. The voter casts his vote for Lieberman
primarily because the Left is seen as being out of touch, elitist and incapable
of solving the intractable situation.
Gal-On admitted as much in an April 3 interview, when she noted that Jews from
the Middle East are "not the classic faces of Meretz." Neither are Russians or
Ethiopians. Rather than courting these voters with reasonable solutions, some on
the Left would simply ignore them and ask foreigners to do the job. This is not
a positive development. The reaction of those in a democracy when the electorate
fails to agree with them should not be to declare that democracy a failure but
to frame their proposed solutions in a palatable manner.
sfrantzman@hotmail.com
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The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
Biden's signal
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 686 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
There's little doubt that US Vice President Joe Biden was signaling, in his
Sunday television interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, that the Obama
administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose military force to stop
Iran from building nuclear weapons.
GS: Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he agreed with
President Obama to give until the end of the year for this whole process of
engagement to work. After that, he's prepared to take matters into his own
hands. Is that the right approach?
Biden: Look, Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's
in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.
GS: Whether we agree or not?
Biden: Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign
nation is... But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our
behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of
the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of
Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues. If the Netanyahu
government decides to take a course of action different than the one being
pursued now, that is their sovereign right... That is not our choice.
GS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential
threat [and] they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United
States will not stand in the way?
Biden: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and
cannot do... if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened
and their survival is threatened by another country.
GS: You say we can't dictate - but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight
rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike.
Biden: I'm not going to speculate, George, on those issues, other than to say
Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests; and we have a right and
we will determine what's in our interests.
BIDEN HAS been known to commit the occasional faux pas. But the Israeli
consensus is that he was sending a message from President Barack Obama. Is live
television the best way for two allies to communicate on a matter of such
import? Yes - if the goal was to instantly "reward" Binyamin Netanyahu for
uttering the magic words "two states for two peoples" at Sunday's cabinet
meeting.
Or could Biden have been signaling the Iranians that Washington would unleash
the Israeli military if the mullahs continue to drag their heels on engagement?
Unlikely.
After Biden's remarks, however, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, implied he doesn't think an Israeli bombing is preferable to an
Iranian bomb.
ISRAELIS FEEL little appreciation for Biden's signal. Not to sound churlish, but
we don't really need his confirmation that we are a sovereign country. Moreover,
president George W. Bush's April 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon - the one Obama
studiously ignores - already supported Israel's right "to deter and defend
itself, by itself, against any threat."
So rather than subcontracting the safeguarding of American, Western and Arab
interests in keeping the bomb out of Iran's clutches - and being left to
eventually face down Iran on our own - what Israelis would prefer is concerted
US leadership now.
The administration remains committed to reaching out to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Fearing it would upset the mullahs, however, Obama's has been reluctant to
adequately prepare for the likely possibility that the Iranians will not even
discuss their nuclear program, or will use any talks to stall for time.
The Europeans - even as they conduct billions of dollars' worth of trade with
Iran - are belatedly turning to Washington for leadership on genuinely
meaningful sanctions, the kind that would get Khamenei's undivided attention,
should engagement fail.
Though even its most hardcore Western apologists have stopped making excuses for
the Iranian regime, the Obama administration appears hesitant to see it for what
it is.
Obama will have an opportunity to prove our assessment wrong later this week, at
the G-8.
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The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
Letters
BYLINE: Ben Reuven, Moshe Lichtenstein, Judy Prager, Cyril Atkins, Kenneth
Besig, Uri Hirsch, Trevor Davis, Thelma Blumberg, Jerusalem Post staff
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1166 words
HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters
A real star
Sir, - I was very pleased to read Judy Siegel- Itzkovich's insightful "The two
worlds of Elchai Refoua" (June 5) about the very promising young religiously
observant singer who is one of the stars of this year's Kochav Nolad (A Star Is
Born).
Last year I had the pleasure of getting to know Elchai as a fellow-participant
on the show, and one could not hope to meet a more humble and modest young man,
with an amazing voice and charismatic personality. Strangely enough, we later
appeared together on one of the promotional interviews for the show - he as the
youngest participant and I as the white-bearded oldest (my venerable age
probably sealed my doom in the contest.)
I was also impressed by the fact that Elchai was always chaperoned to auditions
by his mother, who obviously takes great pride in his success.
Finally, it is good to see gifted young religious performers like Elchai vying
with the rest for the dazzling lights of stardom. Hope you get to the final,
Elchai!
BEN REUVEN
Jerusalem
We're speaking up
Sir, - As Torah Jews, we are deeply distressed by the desecration of Shabbos in
our holy land - all the more so when it is government-sanctioned.
However, nothing can ever excuse the type of violence and wanton destruction of
public property that has been reported in recent days such as the throwing of
rocks at police officers and the burning of garbage dumpsters - all of which is
diametrically opposed to the teachings of our Holy Torah.
Lest our silence be misconstrued as passive acceptance of the violence, we
condemn it in the strongest terms, as do the vast, overwhelming majority of
Torah Jews worldwide ("Unquiet weekend," Editorial, July 6).
MOSHE LICHTENSTEIN
Ramat Bet Shemesh
and 50 other signatories
Doctors at the fence
Sir, - I was amazed and disgusted at "Israeli doctors to train Bil'in protesters
in first aid at site of disputed security fence" (July 6).
Have the doctors gone mad? These radical rioters are made up of all kinds of
anti-Israel rent-a-mobs who delight in making life miserable and dangerous for
our forces trying to uphold the rule of law. What next - we offer Hamas and the
PA special ambulances to ferry their injured terrorists to hospital?
These do-gooder physicians would do better to tell the rioters to stay home,
then they would not be injured in the first place.
JUDY PRAGER
Petah Tikva
Sir, - The famous Wise men of Chelm built a bridge over the river. It kept
falling down and injuring people. So the wise men, instead of building a
stronger bridge, built a hospital near the bridge to treat the injured.
Perhaps someone should "wise up."
CYRIL ATKINS
Beit Shemesh
Just not in my shul
Sir, - As a religious Jew I was delighted to read "2 Orthodox women's
conferences present decidedly different takes on feminism" (July 1).
I was not surprised at the religiously conservative viewpoint of the Chabad
women, but a little disappointed by the claim of the Kolech organization that
biological differences account for the sexual discrepancies in Judaism.
Torah was written for and by a patriarchal society and thus normative - or
Orthodox - Judaism has kept its largely patriarchal approach. In the meantime,
Jewish society has become more gender-equal, with many Jewish women logically
expecting our religion to reflect that change.
In Europe and America, Jewish women have been successfully integrated into the
organizational and leadership aspects of the Jewish community. But in areas like
Torah or Haftorah reading, leading the congregation in prayer and spiritual
leadership they have had far less success, at least in the Orthodox community.
And this is unlikely to change.
This is because of people like me. I would not attend religious services in a
synagogue with mixed seating, where women lead the services, or where women read
the Torah because I simply would not feel comfortable; most of my friends feel
the same.
At the same time, I have no problem with mixed seating, women leading the
services, etc., just as long as they do it somewhere else.
KENNETH BESIG
Kiryat Arba
Sir, - While Chabad is to be greatly respected for all it does, the Kolech
organization will do much more for bringing non-observant Jews closer to an
Orthodox lifestyle.
Women should be allowed to participate in and accomplish everything possible in
our traditions that is allowed halachically.
That leaves a lot of room for progress. We need to "modernize" Orthodoxy, not
keep it in the dark ages.
URI HIRSCH
Netanya
Oy, those Israeli
sportscasters!
Sir, - I hope all tennis fans enjoyed watching the Wimbledon Tourney as much as
I did ("Federer beats Roddick for record 15th slam," July 6).
It would have been perfect, except for one thing: The sportscasters on the
Israeli Sports Channel. They did not describe the games, they "kvetched" them.
"Oy! What a terrible mistake!" "Oy! He's in trouble now!" "Oy! How could he have
made such an awful shot?" "Oy! How could he have given him such an easy
opportunity?"
Our Israeli crew sounded like they had never stood on a baseline, racket in
hand, and tried to return a ball coming at them at over 150 kph, with about half
a second to react. Had they shut up and watched METV, they would have heard
expert commentators of the likes of John McEnroe, Tim Heneman and Tracy Austin
discuss the difficult court conditions that caused bad bounces and made even
Roger Federer sometimes look like a duffer.
Finally - alas, too late - they brought in former Israeli champ Shlomo
Glickstein to add a few knowledgeable comments. They would have more honorably
earned their salaries had they just clammed up and allowed those who know more
than diddley about the game to watch the matches in peace.
TREVOR DAVIS
Asseret
'Allo? 'Allo?
Sir, - Herb Keinon was correct in boasting about Israel's improved services
("Israeli progress," June 29).
I well remember the difficulties of 20 years ago with the telephone service.
Compared with America's perfected phone service, Israel's was ludicrous. Today
the situation seems to be reversed: There are now many excellent options in
Israel, as opposed to a complete breakdown in America.
These telephone vagaries were forced into my life just recently, when I closed
up my apartment in Baltimore. I found the second line I needed for my computer
was not in service. The company informed me that it would be two whole weeks
until it could be restored - and then charged me service for the entire period.
Another time, I discontinued my service while away in Israel. Upon my return
they reconnected me with a neighbor in an old-fashioned party line.
Keinon's "Why can't the Americans do a simple thing like this the way they do in
Israel?" was right on target.
THELMA BLUMBERG
Kiryat Arba
CORRECTION
"Aharon Barak laments human rights reality in the 'occupied territories'" (June
26) misquoted former Supreme Court president. In describing Israeli Jewish
attitudes toward Israeli Arabs he did not use the words "in favor of throwing
the [Arabs] into the sea," but rather "in favor of throwing the [Arabs] out...."
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1133 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
'Oklahoma!' vs 'Rent'
BYLINE: GIL TROY
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 988 words
HIGHLIGHT: Two sides to modern Zionism. Center Field. The writer is professor of
history at McGill University. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel,
Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why
Moderates Make the Best Presidents. He splits his time between Montreal and
Jerusalem.
Last month, two great off-off-off-off Broadway productions graced Jerusalem's
surprisingly vibrant Anglo community theater scene: Oklahoma! produced by
Encore! and Rent, produced by Merkaz Hamagshimim-Hadassah's Center Stage
Theater. Both Broadway musicals, while very different from each other, are
deeply, some would say quintessentially, American. Yet each of the shows
resonated in Jerusalem, reflecting contrasting dimensions of Zionist history -
and of the modern Israeli dilemma.
Oklahoma! is a classic mid-20th-century American musical about the American West
at the turn of the previous century. Based on a 1931 play, Green Grow the
Lilacs, the Broadway production premiered in March 1943 and was adapted as a
film in 1955. Set in the Oklahoma territory in 1906, this first collaboration of
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II is bursting with optimism, from its
opening song "O What a Beautiful Morning," to its showstopper "Oklahoma" -
O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a, Oklahoma, OK.
These settlers, er, pioneers, feel tremendous excitement about living in a
"brand new state." While Curly, Laurey and Jud certainly are memorable
individuals, the individuals' true power in the musical comes from their group
identity, wherein they identify themselves as either "farmers" or "cowmen" (who
"should be friends").
Such confidence and collectivism reflects the American pioneering experience and
World War II America's "greatest generation," but also reflects Zionist
history's heroic phase. While David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Menachem Begin
were memorable individuals, they made a state by banding together and working
together, via the kibbutz and the Palmah, the Yishuv and the Irgun. And despite
the great traumas of the 1930s, '40s and '50s - including the Holocaust, the
deaths of nearly 6,000 of 600,000 Israeli Jews during the 1948 war, and the
Tzena, the period of privations that followed - Israelis expressed a can-do
faith and improvisational spirit that charmed the world. The classic Israeli
song that sums up the ethos of the time proclaims, "Eem zeh tov o eem zeh ra,
ein kvar derech hazara" - whether it is good or bad, there's no turning back.
SURPRISINGLY, JUMPING ahead to the mid-1990s, Rent has a bleakness, a heaviness,
a sense of alienation and tragedy that belies the late 20th century's tremendous
accomplishments. Based on Puccini's La Boheme, set in Alphabet City of the East
Village, the musical premiered on Broadway in 1996 and was made into a movie in
2005.
If it did not have such exuberant singing and dancing, along with an ultimately
life-affirming message all about "love," Rent would be a major downer. It is
about AIDS and addiction, about heartbreak and writer's block, about selling out
and dying young. In a bizarre twist of life mimicking art, the show's creator,
Jonathan Larson, died of an aortic aneurysm just before the show's off-Broadway
opening.
Perhaps the best of the many moving, memorable songs, is the showstopper "La Vie
Boheme," a rollicking ode to Bohemia. Dancing on tables, the cast drinks a
toast: "To days of inspiration/Playing hookey, making something/Out of nothing,
the need/To express,/To communicate,/To going against the grain,/Going
insane,/Going mad." And ultimately, the play's message emerges in the AIDS
support group's anthem: "There is no future/ There is no past/I live this moment
as my last."
This creativity, singularity, individualism and, frankly, nihilism captures the
modern condition in North America and Israel. Many moderns, especially young
people, want to live for the moment, to forget the burdens of the past, of
tradition; they do not want to be yoked to responsibilities attendant to
building a future. This ethos fed the anything goes, rollicking, consumer-crazed
period that preceded 2008's economic crash. In Israel, this sensibility
manifests itself in normalization, as many have succumbed to the modern
epidemics of paganism and materialism, while being more open, more
improvisational, than their predecessors, for better and for worse.
THE TWO PLAYS' strikingly different locations in Jerusalem reinforced the
contrast between the ethos of tradition and innovation, between the "us"-ness of
the past and the "I"-ness of the moment. The performance of Oklahoma! my
children and I attended was in the Hirsch Theater of the Hebrew Union
College-Beit Shmuel-Mercaz Shimshon complex. These magnificent buildings are set
across the valley from the magical Old City itself, flanked by the monumental
David Citadel Hotel and the classic King David Hotel. In short, the location
conveyed a sense of majesty and history rooted in the resonant Jewish past, the
vibrant Israeli present and the glorious Zionist future.
By contrast, and most fittingly, Rent was produced on a rooftop in Talpiot's
industrial area. This location, which was only developed in the last 20 years as
the country modernized and became more materialistic, conveyed a grittiness,
edginess and otherness entirely fitting to the production and to the modern
condition.
Group identity taken to its extreme makes community conformist, suffocating;
taken to its extreme, individualism becomes indulgent, nihilistic, aimless.
Individuals and societies need to find a healthy balance, seeking enough of a
sense of community to remain centered, preserving enough individualism to roam
creatively. In the late 1800s, the Zionist revolution responded to the
challenges of modernity and of "the Jewish problem," yearning for individual
fulfillment for Jews and collective salvation for the Jewish people.
Singing the right song, with lyrics that match the melody, with a message of the
"me" and the "us," of the yesterday and tomorrow, something light enough to
enjoy but profound enough to engage, remains the great challenge facing Zionism
today, Israel today, in fact moderns today - with Zionism one compelling path to
individual and communal salvation for Jews and the Jewish people.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: THE MERKAZ HAMAGSHIMIM-HADASSAH's Center Stage Theater
production of 'Rent.' The play's creativity, singularity, individualism and
nihilism captures the modern condition in North America and Israel. (Credit:
Yehoshua Halevi)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1134 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
What countermissionaries believe
BYLINE: PENINA TAYLOR
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 687 words
HIGHLIGHT: A Jew should have the right to live in the Jewish state without being
harassed by someone trying to convince him that his faith is not good enough.
The writer, now the director of Shomrei Emet Institute for Countermissionary
Studies and the founder of Torah Life Strategies, spent over 17 years in
Christian and Messianic outreach and missions before returning to the Jewish
faith.
I am completely misunderstood. As a countermissionary, people think that it's my
goal in life to make people miserable, to persecute poor Christians living in
our country and to tell people what they should believe. Nothing could be
further from the truth. People think that a countermissionary's raison d'tre is
to destroy freedom of religion and to create within Israel a state similar to
that of the Muslim countries that surround us, where no one has any freedom to
believe anything other than those beliefs held by the thugs who hold power.
Again, wrong. Some people think I hate Christians. Wrong also.
Believe it or not, the purpose of a countermissionary is ultimately to improve
Jewish-Christian relations. As it says in Robert Frost's poem, "Mending Wall,"
good fences make good neighbors. By teaching Jews why we are not Christians and
by teaching Christians to respect our boundaries, we improve relations between
the two faiths. Blurring the lines between the two faiths doesn't serve to
bridge the gap caused by fear and misunderstanding; it weakens Judaism and
causes Christians to have less respect for the Jewish people. Breaking down the
walls breaks down the distinctiveness and the different callings of each faith
system, and only fosters more hatred and fear.
The purpose of the countermissionary is to strengthen the Jewish people and to
teach Christians that we have reasons for choosing to reject their faith. When
they can understand and accept this, we can progress to a level of rejecting
their faith without rejecting them as people, and the two peoples can live
side-by-side in mutual respect and understanding, agreeing to disagree.
WHEN WE say that it should be illegal to proselytize in Israel, we are not
saying that a Christian doesn't have the right to believe as he wishes or even
to worship God as he sees fit. What we are saying is that a Jew has the right to
live in the Jewish state in freedom, without needing to worry about being
harassed by someone trying to convince him that his faith is not good enough,
that he needs to accept Christianity's concept of God to be able to even have a
relationship with God in the first place, or that his child will be convinced to
abandon the faith of his forefathers.
We are asking the Christian to exercise true friendship. The message we are
sending to our Christian friends is this: The Jewish people who live here would
like to make a request of you. Please don't proselytize while you are here. If
you are truly our friends, you won't. Why? Because friends are friends with no
strings attached. We understand that your faith and belief system compels you to
share what you believe with all who do not, regardless of their own personal
faith or lack thereof.
WE UNDERSTAND that your Bible instructs you to make it a priority to share your
faith with the Jewish people, since Jesus was Jewish. Some even say that because
of this they owe the Jews a debt of gratitude.
But gratitude is best shown with respect to the person on whom it is being
bestowed and not with respect to the giver. Please show us that you respect us
by not trying to convince us to change our beliefs.
We understand that the reason you feel compelled to share your beliefs with us
is that your faith teaches that without a belief in Jesus, no one can have a
relationship with God. Please remember that the Jewish faith has always taught
about having an intimate relationship with God - and it did this thousands of
years before Jesus or the New Testament.
The vast majority of us are either immigrants or the children and grandchildren
of immigrants. We came to this country because we wanted live in a Jewish state.
Had we not wanted this, we might have chosen to live elsewhere.
Please respect our faith and our feelings and refrain from proselytizing while
you are visiting our home.
Good fences really do make good neighbors, and countermissionaries really are
misunderstood. We are here to build, not to destroy; to foster greater
understanding, not to promote hatred.
But we do this only through strengthening Judaism, not by blurring the lines
between it and Christianity.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: ISRAEL-BASED members of Jews for Jesus spread their message.
Countermissionaries say that it should be illegal to proselytize here. (Credit:
Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1135 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
Avoiding an American ambush
BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1834 words
HIGHLIGHT: Jerusalem must understand that it gains nothing from making
concessions to a president bent on picking a fight with it. OUR WORLD
It works out that US President Barack Obama is a man of heartfelt, long-held
principles. It also works out that his principles are divorced from reality and
unresponsive to any facts that contradict them.
This much was made clear by a New York Times report on Sunday which discussed a
recently "rediscovered" 1983 article Obama published in a student magazine on
the subject of nuclear disarmament when he was an undergraduate at Columbia
University.
Obama's article, "Breaking the war mentality," was ostensibly a feature story
showcasing two student organizations that advocated a freeze in the US's nuclear
arsenal. But the young Obama didn't hesitate to use his platform to make his
own, even more radical views known to his readers. As he put it: "The narrow
focus of the Freeze movement, as well as academic discussion of first- versus
second-strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they
continue adding to their billion-dollar erector sets."
Citing a Rastafarian reggae musician as his foreign policy authority, Obama
ruminated, "When Peter Tosh sings that 'everybody's asking for peace, but
nobody's asking for justice,' one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or
arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be
another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem, instead of the
disease itself."
As one of the freeze advocates explained gently, contending with "the disease
itself" was an unachievable goal since "you're not going to get rid of the
military in the near future."
THERE IS NOTHING shocking about Obama's embrace of radical politics as a college
student. Particularly at Columbia, adopting such positions was the most
conformist move a student could make. What is disturbing is that these views
have endured over time, although they were overtaken by events 20 years ago.
Just six years after Obama penned his little manifesto, the Iron Curtain came
crashing down. The Soviet empire fell not because radicals like Obama called for
the US to destroy its nuclear arsenal, it fell because president Ronald Reagan
ignored them and vastly expanded the US's nuclear arsenal while deploying
short-range nuclear warheads in Europe and launching the US's missile defense
program while renouncing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
On Monday Obama arrived in Moscow for a round of disarmament talks with Russian
President Dmitri Medvedev. According to most accounts, while in Moscow Obama
plans to abandon US allies Ukraine and Georgia and agree to deep cuts in US
missile defense programs. In exchange, Moscow is expected to consider joining
Washington in cutting back on its nuclear arsenal just as the likes of Iran and
North Korea build up theirs.
Of course, even if Russia doesn't agree to scale back its nuclear arsenal, Obama
has already ensured that the US will slash the size of its own by refusing to
fund its modernization. In short, Obama is working to implement the precise
policy he laid out as an unoriginal student conformist 26 years ago.
BY NOW of course, none of this is particularly surprising. Since entering office
seven long months ago, Obama has demonstrated that his guiding philosophy for
foreign affairs is that the US and its allies are to blame for their
adversaries' hostility toward them. All that needs to happen for peace to break
out throughout the world is for the US and its allies to quit clinging to their
guns and religions and start apologizing for their rudeness. In furtherance of
this goal, Obama has devoted himself to putting the screws on US allies,
slashing America's defense budget and embarking on a worldwide tour apologizing
to US adversaries.
The basic reality that the US is being led by a radical ideologue who clings to
his views in the face of overwhelming proof of their falsity is the most
fundamental fact that world leaders must reckon with today as they formulate
policies to contend with the Obama administration. This is first and foremost
the case for Israel.
Since the Netanyahu government took office three months ago, the Obama
administration has placed inordinate pressure on Jerusalem in a bid to coerce it
into making massive concessions to the Palestinians. These concessions are
demanded not for peace, but simply for the sake of placing pressure on Israel.
Obama wishes to pressure it to show his good intentions to the Arabs and Iran.
TO DATE, Obama's loudest demand has been to officially prohibit all Jewish
construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Although the demand is
intrinsically bigoted, illegal and immoral, and although the consequences of the
expulsion of all Jews from Gaza in 2005 shows that Israeli land giveaways and
ethnic cleansing bring war not peace, the Netanyahu government has opted not to
get into an open confrontation with the administration on the issue.
Instead, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government have sought to
treat Obama's offensive as a routine disagreement between otherwise close
allies. Rather than defending the principles of Jewish national, legal and human
rights and the country's right to security, Netanyahu has sought to reach an
accommodation with Obama by reducing the discussion to a conversation about the
inevitable natural growth of Jewish communities due to expanding families.
But what Obama's slavish devotion to his radical world view shows is that
Netanyahu's decision to seek an accommodation is not simply an exercise in
futility, it is a recipe for disaster. Obama and his advisers do not care that
Jewish fertility rates are the fastest rising in the world. They do not care
that by arguing for a complete halt in "natural" growth, they are effectively
adopting a eugenics argument the likes of which no US policy-maker has dared to
advance since before the Holocaust. They are looking to fight because they
believe that the US is best served by fighting with its allies - particularly
with Israel. Any concession Netanyahu makes will just form the basis for the
next round of demands.
Far from seeking an agreement with Obama, Netanyahu should realize that given
the president's ideological rigidity, there is no agreement to be had. Instead
of trying to resolve the issue, Netanyahu's goal should be to prolong
discussions until Obama finds someone else to pick on.
Rather than making wrongheaded concessions to Obama on Jewish population growth
in the vain hope of mollifying him, Israel should go on the offensive on issues
where it has something to gain from a confrontation. Two specific issues - aside
from Iran's nuclear program - should be raised in this regard.
FIRST, IN recent months the Obama administration has applied massive pressure on
Israel to remove its military forces from Judea and Samaria, curtail its
counterterror operations and allow US-trained, anti-Israel Palestinian military
forces to deploy in the towns and cities. Rather than openly oppose these
demands, in the interests of cultivating good relations, the Netanyahu
government has gone along with the program. This it has done in spite of the
fact that the Palestinian forces now deploying throughout the areas have a
history of participating in and supporting terror attacks against Israel as well
as terrorizing their own people.
Last week the government quietly announced that the IDF is pulling out of most
Palestinian population centers and turning the keys over to these hostile
US-trained forces. This was a mistake.
In the weeks to come, the government should bluntly and publicly discuss and
protest Fatah political and military leaders' continued support for terrorists
and terrorist attacks against Israel. Netanyahu and his government should also
detail human-rights abuses Fatah personnel routinely carry out against
Palestinian journalists, businessmen and other civilians. The administration
should be forced to defend its decision to empower these corrupt,
terror-supporting brutes at the expense of Israel's security, and to force US
taxpayers to foot the bill for its cockamamie priorities.
THE SECOND ISSUE is US military aid. For years Israel's detractors have pointed
to this aid as "proof" that it is a strategic burden for America. But in recent
years, and particularly since the Obama administration took office, it is
becoming increasingly clear that US military assistance may be a greater burden
for Israel than for the US.
On Sunday The Jerusalem Post reported that the Pentagon has forced Israel
Aerospace Industries to back out of a joint partnership with a Swedish aerospace
company to compete in a multibillion dollar tender to sell new multirole
fighters to the Indian air force. And as the Post reported, this is the second
major deal the Pentagon has forced Israel to withdraw from in the past year.
Last summer it was forced to bow out of a $500 million tender to supply the
Turkish army with a new main battle tank. In both cases, US firms were competing
in the tenders and the Pentagon threatened that Israeli participation would risk
continued US-Israeli cooperation.
Today Israel faces the prospect of not having a new- generation fighter. The
Pentagon has placed so many draconian restrictions on its purchase of the F-35
Joint Strike Fighter, and raised the price so high, that it makes little
strategic or economic sense to purchase it. So too, last week the navy announced
it has decided to explore the option of building its own warships rather than
buy one of two competing US naval platforms as planned because the US
contractors' costs have gone up so high. The navy is also taking into
consideration the fact that by building domestic platforms, it will provide
needed employment to shipyard workers.
All in all, both in terms of pure economics and in terms of the massive and
constantly escalating restrictions the Obama administration is now placing on
Israeli use of US technologies and munitions, maintaining US military assistance
makes less and less sense with each passing day.
Were Israel to initiate a conversation about cutting back on this assistance, it
would be able to ensure that the talks take place on its terms. Moreover, given
the fact that Israel may indeed be best served by simply ending its military
assistance package, the risk involved in such discussions would not be
particularly earth shattering. Finally, by making clear that it is not dependent
on Obama's kindness, it would be expanding its maneuvering room on other issues
as well.
What Obama's radicalism tells us is that he is not a man who is moved by
rational discourse. He is not a man who is willing to be convinced that he is
mistaken. But even in these dire circumstances, Israel is not without good
options for securing its interests vis-^-vis Washington.
To do so, Jerusalem must first understand that it gains nothing from making
concessions to a president bent on picking a fight with it. Then it must
recognize that there are issues where a confrontation with Obama can serve its
interests. Finally it must pursue those issues with energy and passion.
caroline@carolineglick.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: CHILDREN ENJOYING summer. Obama and his advisers do not care
that Israeli Jewish fertility rates are the fastest rising in the world.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1136 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
It's the occupation, stupid!
BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1266 words
HIGHLIGHT: We must signal that it will come to an end and then begin to act
accordingly. Encountering Peace. The writer is the co-CEO of the
Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. www.ipcri.org
Many voices here are already pondering the question how are we going to deal
with at least three more years of an anti-Israel administration in Washington.
These are the people who think that pressuring Jerusalem to meet its road map
obligations is empowering the Arabs and weakening the country.
One such person, and he defined himself as pro-peace, told me that until the
Arabs recognize Israel as the Jewish state, freezing settlements sends the wrong
message; it tells the Arabs they don't have to do anything and that all of the
pressure will only be on Israel.
But the government knows that it is obligated to the road map, which states
quite explicitly it must "immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected
since March 2001... and consistent with the Mitchell Report, freeze all
settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)." While it is true
that the Sharon government issued 14 reservations to the road map, the US never
accepted them, except for what appears to be an unwritten understanding between
Sharon and president George W. Bush regarding growth in the settlement blocs and
in Jerusalem. But the Bush administration was voted out of office and with it
those unwritten understandings, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has
indicated so clearly.
WHAT'S ALL the fuss anyway? Who really cares about a few more houses and school
classrooms in settlements? Well, the whole world. At the outset of Oslo, the
world, including the Arab world (and also including the supporters of peace in
Israel and in Palestine), actually believed that the peace process was about
ending the occupation, peace between two states living side-by-side, building
cross-boundary cooperation in every field possible, ending violence and ending
the conflict.
During those optimistic days, several countries without diplomatic relations
with Israel established them, and several Arab countries even allowed it to open
commercial interests offices in their countries. Some Arab countries even opened
their own representative offices in Israel. This was possible because they
believed the Oslo peace process would bring an end to the occupation.
They had good reason to believe that. The Israeli- Palestinian Interim Agreement
of September 1995 stated clearly: "The two sides agree that West Bank and Gaza
Strip territory, except for issues that will be negotiated in the permanent
status negotiations, will come under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Council
in a phased manner, to be completed within 18 months from the date of the
inauguration of the council." The agreement further stated: "Redeployments of
Israeli military forces to specified military locations will commence after the
inauguration of the council and will be gradually implemented.".
The interpretation of these sections was that prior to the beginning of
permanent status agreements Israel would have withdrawn from more than 90
percent of the West Bank. The US and the Palestinian calculated then that the
land area connected to permanent status negotiations, meaning the settlements,
accounted for 2%-5% of the West Bank (counting the built-up areas of the
settlements with a radius of about 100 meters from the last home in each
settlement). The "specified military locations" was estimated to account for
about 2% of the West Bank.
WHEN BINYAMIN Netanyahu was first elected in 1996, a "conflict" of
interpretation developed between the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign
Ministry. At that time I saw a document produced by the legal department of the
Foreign Ministry explaining that the new interpretation of the Prime Minister's
Office was incorrect. It stated the following: According to the Prime Minister's
office, the settlement areas in question are based on the statutory planning
maps of the civil administration and not on the built-up areas. Those zoning
maps provide the settlements with about 40% of the West Bank.
Furthermore, the Prime Minister's office stated that instead of "specified
military locations" the real intention was "security zones" - meaning that the
entire Jordan Valley is a security zone, all of the areas around settlements are
security zones, the bypass roads to settlements are security zones, and so are
all of the lands adjacent to the Green Line. In other words, 60% of the West
Bank would remain in Israeli hands, and in the negotiations with the
Palestinians Israel would retain well above 10% of the West Bank, and if
possible more.
This, according to the Palestinians and even the US, was a major breach of the
agreement and it was one of the significant reasons for the failure of the
entire process. At that point, the process ceased to being about ending the
occupation and instead about how emasculated the Palestinian entity would be.
Ehud Barak understood that he would have a very tough negotiation on the
territorial question. When I asked his chief of staff Gilead Sher why the prime
minister was building even more settlements than Netanyahu, his answer was "the
story of the goat" - meaning it would appear that Israel was making larger
concessions than it really was.
Ariel Sharon always believed, as did other Likud leaders,that the settlements
would be the best way of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state in
the West Bank. It turns out that they were probably right. Many today even
question the very viability of a Palestinian state because of the settlements.
Yet the entire international community, with the exception of Iran, Libya and
perhaps Israel (look at the club of nations we have joined), believes that a
Palestinian state must be established on the basis of the June 4, 1967 borders.
There is no other solution to the conflict. Instead of dealing with that
reality, the government is trying to pressure the US and the EU to transform the
peace process into a regional peace process.
Netanyahu, Barak and other members of the government think that if they agree to
a three-month settlement freeze, not including Jerusalem, the world will
consent. The EU and the US in private meetings with Netanyahu and in public
statements have insisted that Israel must focus on the settlement issue and not
on tricks to avoid making the difficult decisions. All settlement building must
stop.
While this is a tactical issue from the standpoint of moving forward with the
peace process, since even a full settlement freeze will change nothing on the
ground, it does have strategic consequences. The settlement freeze is meant to
be an indication that Israel has accepted the principle that the occupation must
come to an end. Only then will it be really possible for the rest of the Arab
world to consider how to phase in normalizing relations as they began to do with
the outset of Oslo.
Yes, Judea and Samaria are our historical, religious and national lands, and the
argument is not about our right to be there, whether the world accept that right
or not. The reality is that there is no other way to achieve peace with our
neighbors. There is global consensus on this issue and continued objection will
only increase our isolation. Boycott, sanctions and divestment are right around
the corner. The international community knows that it worked in South Africa and
that it will work against Israel as well. It is time to wake up and face
reality. We can, with the help and understanding of the world, led by President
Barack Obama, develop a peace process that is based on real security and real
peace, but we must recognize that there are no short cuts. We must signal that
the occupation will come to an end and then begin to act accordingly.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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1137 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
Peres proves a hit in Azerbaijan
BYLINE: ALEXANDER MURINSON
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1002 words
HIGHLIGHT: The Shi'ite Caspian Sea nation fends off Irianian objections to his
visit. LOOKING EASTWARD. The writer is an independent researcher; his book
Turkey's Entente with Israel and Azerbaijan: State Identity and Security in the
Middle East and Caucasus will be published by Routledge in September.
During the first leg of his unprecedented four-day trip to the two former Soviet
Muslim republics of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, President Shimon Peres stopped
over for a weekend visit in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. His visit sent a clear
message to neighboring Iran, negating assertions of groups like al-Qaida and
representatives of Muslim countries that Jews and Muslims are doomed to
perpetual conflict.
Even before embarking on his visit, Peres set the tone by telling Azerbaijani
news agency Trend News that tolerance for other religions typifies both
countries.
"A lot of things unite us," he said. "Azerbaijan manifests tolerance and respect
to the point where Jews, Muslims and Christians can live without hatred and
fanaticism. That is why [Azerbaijan] for me is a special country which I can
trust. This country has its own cultural roots. Oil can be bought, but culture
needs to be created.
"Azerbaijan is a small nation. Both Azerbaijan and Israel face the same problem:
how can a small nation become great? You can become great regardless of the size
of your territory if you accept all the riches of modern science and
technology."
Peres also emphasized the desire of the Israeli leadership to share
technological and scientific assets with Azerbaijan. He continued his interview
by saying that "Israel does not possess significant territory, water, natural
gas or petroleum. That is why we have to rely on our brainpower and our science.
We will share everything we possess with Azerbaijan in the areas of common
interest."
Well-briefed about the paternalistic nature of the Aliyev regime, Peres paid
tribute to Heydar Aliyev, the late father of current Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev. He mentioned that he had met Heydar Aliyev twice and was impressed with
this "highly educated man, who respected tradition."
To further endear himself to his Azerbaijani hosts, Peres pointed to the
established democratic tradition in this secular country. He mentioned that
Azerbaijani women gained suffrage before such Western countries as Switzerland
and the United States.
Peres also focused on the shared experience of living in a hostile neighborhood.
Pointing to the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and unfriendly
activities of the Iranian state apparatus, he said: "I am aware that Azerbaijan
faces a difficult problem emanating from your neighbors. In politics, it is
impossible to choose neighbors, as it is impossible in the family to choose
one's parents. Such is life. Israel fully supports the territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan."
Calling for full diplomatic representation and the opening of an embassy in
Israel, Peres intimated that Israel expresses its support for Azerbaijan's
territorial integrity in international forums. For Azerbaijan to resolve the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue positively, Peres called upon its authorities not only to
get closer to Israel, but also to strengthen ties with American Jewry.
THIS VISIT represents the consummation of a trend begun in 1992 to deepen and
expand bilateral cooperation in economics, agriculture, science and military
affairs.
Peres was accompanied by Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
and National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau, the director-general of the
Defense Ministry, top executives of Israel Military Industries, and 60
businessmen seeking to tighten economic ties with both Azerbaijan and nearby
Khazakstan, two Caspian Sea states.
Among other issues, energy security occupied pride of place. Plans for pipelines
to deliver Azerbaijani natural gas to Israel via Georgia and Turkey were
discussed. Ben- Eliezer, as the infrastructure minister in the previous
government, was directly involved in negotiations about cooperation in energy
and water management,and Landau was briefed about the details.On the first day
of his visit, Peres met Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other officials
for talks on bilateral relations as well as regional and international issues,
according to the Azerbaijani news agency Azertaj. This discussion touched on two
interrelated issues - the unresolved conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh
and relations with Iran, which supports Armenia. Both leaders signed agreements
boosting cooperation in culture, education, science and hi- tech. Concerned
about threats emanating from their neighbors and improving the balance of power
vis-^-vis Armenia, Azerbaijani officials also expressed interest in buying more
Israeli arms, in addition to several previous multimillion-dollar deals.
Exploiting the common bond of Shi'ite Islam, Iranian secret services for years
have been attempting to create secret pro-Iranian cells in Azerbaijan; they
sponsor the Azerbaijani Islamic Party. On June 17, police briefly detained 19
members of the pro-Iranian party for protesting Peres's visit outside the
Foreign Ministry in Baku. The Israeli delegation's arrival coincided with the
trial of four Azerbaijanis and two Lebanese charged with plotting to blow up the
Israeli Embassy in Baku last year. Azerbaijani authorities allege the suspects
were connected with Hizbullah and al-Qaida.
Before Peres's visit, the Iranian leadership had tried arm-twisting in an
attempt to force Azerbaijan to cancel it. That was the purpose of last month's
visit by Iranian Chief of Staff Hasan Firuzabadi. According to Azerbaijani MP
Gudrat Gasanguliev, the Iranian media fanned hysteria during the days of the
Peres visit, claiming that there were mass rallies in Azerbaijan to protest the
meeting. The final straw in this anti-Israeli campaign was the departure of the
Iranian ambassador from Baku - allegedly as a sign of solidarity with the people
of Azerbaijan - as Peres arrived in the airport.
Gasanguliev said in parliament on June 30 that "Azerbaijan extends friendly ties
with Iran, while the Iranian authorities openly express their enmity." He
concluded about the Israeli visit that "the majority of the population welcomed
the visit and the further expansion of Azerbaijani-Israeli relations."
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT Ilham Aliev and President Shimon Peres
shake hands during their meeting in Baku on June 28. (Credit: AP)
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1138 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 7, 2009 Tuesday
Why a two-state solution?
BYLINE: TILMAN TARACH
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 880 words
HIGHLIGHT: If the Arab states really cared, the 'humanitarian catastrophe' in
the Palestinian territories could be brought to an end by unifying the Gaza
Strip with Egypt and the West Bank with Jordan. The writer is a lawyer in
Germany and recently published The Eternal Scapegoat: Holy War, 'The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion' and the Dishonesty of the So-Called Left in the Middle
East Conflict. This article was recently printed in German in the monthly
konkret. (Translation: Dr. Margret Szymanski- Schikora)
Former MK and journalist Uri Avnery alleges that in 1981 defense minister Ariel
Sharon had planned "to encourage the Palestinians to trigger off a revolution in
Jordan and to dethrone King Hussein" so as to "transform Jordan into a
Palestinian state under Yasser Arafat and to negotiate the future of the West
Bank with the Palestinian government in Amman."
At that time, Avnery was still a member of the Knesset. He has since become
rather popular as a Jewish anti-Zionist (and anticommunist, by the way),
particularly in Germany. The plan, into which he claims to have been initiated
by Sharon personally, outrages him today, as if he was a confessing monarchist
to whom the throne of the king of Jordan is sacred.
What would, in fact, have been the arguments against the "Jordanian option"? And
what would be the arguments against it today? Jordan, like the remaining
Palestinian areas, was originally part of the Mandated Territory of Palestine
governed by the British Empire, an area that would have offered sufficient space
for a Jewish and an Arab state. Jordan covers 78 percent of this area, and was
separated by the British as "Transjordan" in 1922. The remaining Palestinian
areas, however, which today comprise Israel plus the West Bank plus the Gaza
Strip, and whose total area is not much larger than Kuwait, will hardly support
two sovereign states, even less if these are hostile to each other.
LET US look at the facts: Jordan's territory is more than four times Israel's,
and its population density is only one sixth of Israel's. The majority of the
Palestinian refugees who fled during the wars of 1948 and 1967 live in Jordan,
and about 60 percent of all Jordanians call themselves Palestinians. Until 1967,
the West Bank was occupied by Jordan: it was actually formally annexed, and the
Palestinian Arabs living there were considered Jordanians (and, even today, they
often hold a Jordanian passport). But, tellingly, none of them called for an
intifada against Jordan to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank, and none
of the Palestinian Arabs ever fought against the Egyptians in Gaza, who had
occupied the Gaza Strip since 1948. The fighting has always and exclusively been
directed against Israel's existence.
When the PLO was founded in 1964, it did not call for the liberation of the
territories occupied by Jordan and Egypt, but for the destruction of Israel;
nobody within the PLO talked about a Palestinian state at that time, not even
Ahmed Shukeiri, until 1967 chairman of the PLO. In Article 24 of its 1964
Charter, the PLO still explicitly renounced any sovereignty claims to the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. The strategy did not change until after 1967, when these
territories were no longer occupied by Jordan or Egypt but by Israel. As early
as in 1965, the PLO boasted of having killed 35 Jews, and the number increased
as the years went on.
This shows the dishonesty of the lamentation, repeated like a mantra, that the
assaults on Jews are only a reaction to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank,
which took place only in the course of the Six Day War.
As is well known, that very same year Israel offered to negotiate the return of
all the occupied territories in exchange for genuine peace, but at the Khartoum
Conference the Arab states answered with the famous triple "no": "no" to peace
with Israel, "no" to recognition of Israel, "no" to negotiations with Israel.
Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba was the only Arab leader who, as early as
1965, supported an agreement with Israel. The Khartoum Conference restated the
old position of the notorious mufti of Jerusalem: Not an inch of sacred Muslim
soil would be allowed to make up a sovereign Jewish state. In this context, it
should be recalled that Jimmy Carter was the first to propose a Palestinian
state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; not until then did the PLO seize this
suggestion.
In reality, the only viable option, which not even the Palestinians can raise
reasonable objections against, is the following: The West Bank (or large parts
of it) is united with Jordan, and Gaza with Egypt. (When, in February 2008, the
Palestinians overran the Egyptian border fortifications into Sinai, their
rallying cry, addressed to the Egyptians, was: "We are one people.")
According to surveys, 30% of Palestinians living in the West Bank are in favor
of such a solution. But it meets with resistance from the Hashemite dynasty of
Jordan, which fears for the loss of the throne; it therefore renounced any
territorial claims to the West Bank back in 1988. As reported by the Jordanian
newspaper Al-Ghad, King Abdullah considered a confederation between Jordan and
the West Bank a "conspiracy against his kingdom and against the Palestinians."
All the well-known Palestinian groups demonize such a plan: The creation of a
second Palestinian state next to Jordan has always been just a pretense for them
to conceal their anti-Israel policies, and the recognition of Jordan enlarged by
the West Bank as the state of the Palestinians would deprive them of this
pretense.
Their real objective has always been the destruction of Israel and, with their
phony anger at the "Zionist arrogance," they would still pursue this goal even
if the Jews of Israel retreated all the way to Masada or Tel Aviv.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: JORDAN'S PRINCE Hussein, eldest son of King Abdullah II, was
named as heir to the throne on Thursday. No one complained about an occuption
when the West Bank was part of Jordan. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
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1139 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 6, 2009 Monday
Unquiet weekend
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 732 words
HIGHLIGHT: Editorial
For 2,000 years, the Jewish people yearned to be sovereign and free in "the land
of Zion and Jerusalem." That wish has not been completely realized, as two
violent disturbances in the capital over Shabbat hammered home.
The first involved anti-Zionist Eda Haredit rioters - joined by other,
non-Zionist haredim - protesting the Sabbath opening of a parking garage near
the Old City's Jaffa Gate. The second reflected an abrogation of responsibility
by authorities as Arab clans shot it out in Silwan.
Arab residents who called police say they hesitated to respond for long hours,
and that ambulances were not given armed escorts (necessary when entering Arab
neighborhoods), anxious calls for medical assistance notwithstanding.
THE HAREDI protesters violated the sanctity of the Sabbath they claim to be
defending by forcing the deployment of large numbers of security forces -
including helicopters, mounted police, and observant officers - at whom they
hurled rocks and invective ("You will burn in the fire of hell," "Nazis," and -
to policemen wearing kippot: "half-breeds.")
Other haredim opened a second front, throwing stones at cars traveling along
Route 9. As night fell, louts set fire to trash bins in Mea She'arim.
Police reacted with questionable restraint, making just one arrest - compared to
60 last Saturday. It remains to be seen whether this approach will boomerang.
Haredi elders did discourage overheated adolescents and children from
participating in Saturday's unrest.
Police pledge to press for indictments of the 60 arrested, even as they continue
to hold 10 of the worst offenders. The extremists are apparently divided, some
wanting to up the ante by holding midweek protests that include many children.
The haredi claim that the car park upsets the religious-secular status quo is
nonsense. The facility, in a non-haredi tourist area, is free and staffed by
non-Jews to accommodate vehicles that would anyway have been driven into town
and left, helter-skelter, to block streets and sidewalks.
One way for Diaspora Jews to register their censure of such extremist behavior
is by insisting that Mea She'arim- based institutions seeking their support go
on record as denouncing such Shabbat riots.
We are also waiting for leading non-haredi Orthodox rabbis to echo former chief
rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and challenge the pernicious idea that it is halachically
permissible to assault security personnel of the State of Israel - much less on
the holy Sabbath.
SILWAN IS located below and to the south of the Old City walls. It is home to
some 45,000 Palestinian Arabs - tax-paying residents of Jerusalem who carry
standard blue Israeli ID cards - and a small enclave of national- religious Jews
based in the City of David.
The terrifying outbreak of night-long mayhem between the Rajabi and Udan-Gawani
clans, reportedly involving automatic weapons and grenades, left two dead and up
to 10 wounded. A number of Arab homes were set ablaze. Repeated calls for calm
over mosque loudspeakers were ignored - which only added to the sense of chaos
and abandonment.
City of David residents said their calls to the police were ignored; Arab
residents said they called for ambulances which never came. A Magen David Adom
spokesman said police would not escort MDA ambulances, so the Red Crescent was
told to bring the wounded to the entrance of the village. Instead they were
taken to an Arab hospital.
Yakir Segev, a Jerusalem municipal councilmen, told Israel Radio that police
have essentially abdicated their responsibilities in the Arab sections of
Jerusalem. "The chance of seeing a regular police cruiser is close to zero,"
lamented Segev. Unconfirmed Arab reports say that the police allow Palestinian
Authority operatives (who are officially barred from the area) to deal with clan
violence.
The police say complaints of abandonment by both Arab and Jewish residents of
Silwan/City of David are unwarranted. They say a number of Border Police jeeps
entered the area when the shooting was first reported, and returned when it
resumed after midnight. They point to three suspects arrested.
Silwan is not located in Hamas-controlled Gaza nor in the Fatah-dominated West
Bank, but within walking distance of the Western Wall, within Jerusalem's
municipal boundaries. The police must act accordingly.
Sovereignty comes with responsibilities. When the latter is abdicated, so is the
former.
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved
1140 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 6, 2009 Monday
Obama: Hard on Israel, soft on Egypt
BYLINE: MICHAEL M. ROSEN
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 913 words
HIGHLIGHT: The writer is an attorney in San Diego, California.
Quick, name the two largest recipients of American foreign aid.
If you guessed Israel and Egypt, you'd be correct. Since 1997, the US has
provided between $2 billion and $3 billion dollars annually to Israel and
between $1b. and $2b. to Egypt, accounting for about a third of its total
foreign aid budget.
But while the US enjoys a friendly relationship with both countries, a yawning
gap has opened recently between the treatment President Barack Obama's
administration has bestowed on Jerusalem and its advances to Cairo.
Much has already been written about Obama's general tendency to express forceful
disagreement with American allies while reserving judgment about (some would say
coddling) bona fide enemies, like the tyrannical Iranian regime or Hugo Chavez's
virtual dictatorship in Venezuela.
But nowhere is the contrast clearer between the State Department's pressure on
democratic governments and its timidity around despotic ones than in its
respective approaches to Israel and Egypt.
Jerusalem Post readers need little reminder of the slights, both petty and
large, that the American administration has inflicted on the Jewish state in the
five months it has been in power.
From preventing media coverage of President Shimon Peres's White House visit, to
grudgingly sending Vice President Joseph Biden to deliver a lukewarm address at
the AIPAC conference, to demanding Israel's recognition of a Palestinian state
(with nothing in return), to insisting on a complete, immediate freeze to
settlement growth, the contrast with president George W. Bush's staunchly pro-
Israel positions is self evident.
IN FACT, on the settlements, even earnest peace processors like Aaron David
Miller have criticized Obama for overemphasizing them, calling them a
"distraction." At a recent forum in a Washington-area synagogue, Miller, who
participated in the 2000 Camp David negotiations, argued that "given the stakes
and reality, we are going to need a relationship with Israel of great intimacy
in order to do this. We need to think very carefully about how we're going about
it."
And James Kirchick, an assistant editor of the (liberal) New Republic, observed
that during Obama's much- ballyhooed Cairo speech to "the Muslim world," the
president "only criticized one state by name, earning him more applause than any
other part of his remarks. What was it? A critique of Israel's settlements
policy."
So it's hardly surprising, given Washington's current obsession with preventing
the addition of guest-rooms in Ma'aleh Adumim, that only 6 percent of Jewish
Israelis consider Obama "pro-Israel." But what's surely more surprising is
Obama's outright abandonment of human rights and democracy concerns when it
comes to Israel's neighbor to the south.
EGYPT HAS CONSISTENTLY earned dismal rankings from Freedom House, the
independent NGO that annually evaluates every county's level of freedom. Calling
Egypt "not free" and awarding it political rights and civil liberties scores of
six and five out of 10, respectively, Freedom House derided President Hosni
Mubarak's "suppression of journalists' freedom of expression, repression of
opposition groups and the passage of constitutional amendments that hinder the
judiciary's ability to balance against executive excess." (By contrast, Israel
earned a "free" ranking and political rights and civil liberties scores of one
and two, respectively.)
Bush, like his predecessors, considered making foreign aid to Egypt contingent
on liberal reforms to Mubarak's largely illiberal regime - a step urged by
Egyptian democracy activists. While the US never formally withheld aid on these
grounds, the threat alone likely prevented further human rights abuses and gave
succor to brave Egyptians standing up for reforms.
But within months of assuming her position, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
told an Egyptian television anchor that "conditionality is not our policy." The
US ambassador to Egypt also announced an end to funding of civil-society groups
in Egypt in an effort to curry favor with Mubarak.
During a May press conference with Egyptian democracy activists in Washington
(presumably, meeting with them in Cairo would have proven too "controversial"),
Clinton paid brief lip service to the importance of democracy and human rights,
then swiftly moved to discussing the Israeli- Palestinian peace process and
Egyptian economic development.
This was followed shortly thereafter by Obama's Cairo speech, in which he did,
to his credit, mention the universal desire for freedom, but then, it typical
Obaman fashion, applied an important caveat: "Each nation gives life to this
principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America
does not presume to know what is best for everyone." While this bromide sounds
innocent enough, it sends a clear signal to Mubarak, and all authoritarian
rulers, that the US will not press them, even gently, to liberalize further.
And as Joshua Muravchik observes in the July/August issue of Commentary, these
words were delivered in an auditorium at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, which
admits into its precincts no non-Muslims, including the nearly 20% of the
Egyptian population that is Christian. So much for promoting religious
tolerance.
Thus, despite Israel's and Egypt's geographical proximity and comparable
consumption of US foreign aid, the Obama administration has strongly pressured
the former while indulging the latter. Pity the reverse isn't true.
michaelmrosen@yahoo.com
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: EGYPTIAN POLICEMEN prevent demonstrators from gathering on June
27 to commemorate the seventh day of the death of Iranian protester Neda Agha
Soltan. (Credit: AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved
1141 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 6, 2009 Monday
Saudi sanctimony
BYLINE: DAVID M. WEINBERG
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 865 words
HIGHLIGHT: Saudi Arabia always hews to the PR minimum. The writer is director of
public affairs at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
His Royal Highness Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia,
works hard to get good press. He throws swell up-market galas, puts on grand
interfaith conferences and finances numerous think tanks and lobbying firms. He
also hands out fancy gold medals on thick gold chains - of which Barak Hussein
Obama was a recent enchanted recipient.
Every once in a distant while, the savvy Saudi king also pulls the best trick in
the book. He lets loose a feeble - but tantalizing - hint about the remote
possibility of a theoretical chance that he might, someday, under exceptional
circumstances and only if he unconditionally gets his way, begrudgingly accede
to some faint warming of ties with Israel.
It's a soft lob, a pain-free ploy, Saudi sophistry at its best. Yet the ruse
works wonders. Speak very vaguely and indirectly about peace with Israel, and
presto! You're in Washington's good books. You're now a peace process "leader"
with a diplomatic "initiative" in your name. No concrete follow-up required. No
need to put your money where your mouth is.
Not that the king doesn't know how to act decisively, or spread around a few
American dollars, when he needs and wants to.
The Saudis hauled in truckloads of cash to buy the recent elections in Lebanon
to ensure a Sunni (i.e., non- Hizbullah) victory. They've bankrolled Lashkar
e-Taiba (of Mumbai infamy), Hamas and other radical Islamic movements worldwide
when it suited them, while brutally crushing other groups, like al-Qaida, when
these became a threat to them.
They've openly embraced, then bluntly cold-shouldered, different Palestinian and
American leaders, as per their changing interests. Riyadh also funds madrassas
and mosques the world over to aggressively promote its purist Wahhabi brand of
Islam.
THUS, SAUDI KINGS and princes know how to make things happen, when they want to.
So, if King Abdullah, really wanted to lead the Arab world toward peace with
Israel, he could find a way or two to express his "moderation" more clearly and
make things happen.
But the sanctimonious Saudis always seem to hew to the PR minimum. When they had
a 9/11 image problem (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, remember?), then-Crown
Prince Abdullah nattered to The New York Times about "full normalization" with
Israel in exchange for "full withdrawal" from the territories. It sounded pretty
good. In a flash, Abdullah transformed the discourse from Saudi involvement in
terrorism to Saudi peacemaking.
However, as Prof. Joshua Teitelbaum of the Dayan Center has pointed out, by the
time the Abdullah trial balloon reached the Arab summit in Beirut in March 2002,
the initiative had been modified and its terms hardened. It watered down "full
normalization," rewarded Syria with a presence on the shores of the Sea of
Galilee and enshrined a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel.
Since then, the sangfroid Saudis haven't been willing to bat an eyelash at
Israel. But the dodge worked so well that today the Obama administration is
touting the Saudi "led" Arab peace initiative as a cornerstone of its regional
peace diplomacy.
The only problem is that the supercilious Saudi king doesn't really want to
lead. He can't even bring himself to give President Obama some rope with which
to entice, or hang, Israel. According to news reports, Washington can't seem to
squeeze any commitments about normalization from the Saudis, even if Israel
freezes all settlement activity and paints the Jerusalem Old City walls in the
Saudi national colors.
NOW, NOBODY was expecting the supreme Saudi king to come to Jerusalem, God
forbid, Anwar Sadat style. Nor could we reasonably expect Abdullah to offer cash
for resettling Palestinian refugees outside of Israel. Nor will he likely
curtail the vicious anti-Israel propaganda pumped out daily to the Arab world by
his Middle East Broadcasting channel (MBC) or through films like the malevolent
Saudi-produced Olive Dream. Naw, that would be asking too much.
But Abdullah might have, and still could - if peace truly was his goal -
authorize a meeting of Israeli and Saudi academics on desertification and
desalinization or other nonpolitical environmental matters. He could quietly
allow the opening of a low-level Saudi commercial interest section in a Tel
Aviv-based foreign embassy, as some of the other Gulf states have already done.
He could send us a Rosh Hashana card.
Heck, Israel would settle for something simple, like approval for El Al to fly
over Saudi airspace en route to New Delhi and Beijing. We would even be willing
to refrain from serving kosher food, flushing toilets and playing "Hava Nagila"
on the speaker system as our Zionist planes traverse the sacrosanct Saudi
heavens.
But no. King Abdullah can't countenance such muffled gestures toward Israel. Not
even for his friend Obama.
Now here's a thought: Perhaps Obama isn't pressing the Saudis and other Arabs
hard enough about normalizing ties with Israel? Perhaps Abdullah has the
impression that Obama is going to "deliver" Israel to the Arabs, and wrest from
Binyamin Netanyahu a settlement freeze, then withdrawals and then a handover of
Jerusalem? Where oh where could Abdullah have possibly gotten that impression?
LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo: PRESIDENT OBAMA takes off a gold necklace - the King Abdul Aziz
Order of Merit, the country's highest honor - for safekeeping after it was given
to him by Saudi King Abdullah at their meeting in Riyadh last month. (Credit:
AP)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2009 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved
1142 of 2362 DOCUMENTS
The Jerusalem Post
July 6, 2009 Monday
The eulogy you won't hear for Michael Jackson
BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1084 words
HIGHLIGHT: We are obsessed with him because he represents a microcosm of
America. NO HOLDS BARRED. The writer is the founder of This World: The Values
Network. His upcoming book is The Blessing of Enough. www.shmuley.com
When he witnessed the explosion of the atomic bomb he had worked so hard to
develop, Robert Oppenheimer famously quoted from the Bhagavad Gita, "I am become
death, destroyer of worlds." Anyone who witnessed the tragic implosion of the
life of Michael Jackson and its circus aftermath over the last week might amend
the saying to read, "I am fame, destroyer of lives."
From the media infatuation with every prurient detail of the aftermath of his
death, one would think that it was a cartoon character, a caricature of a real
man, that had died rather than an actual person. Michael always had a mutually
exploitive relationship with the American people. He used us to feed his
constant need for attention and we used him to feed our constant need for
entertainment.
Still, it would have been hard to believe that Michael's story could be more
bizarre in death than in life. But from the mother of Michael's two older
children "deciding" whether or not she wants her kids, to Joe Jackson talking up
his new record label as his son's body lies unburied, to nurses coming forward
to claim that Michael asked them to inject him with quantities of painkillers
that would have felled a water buffalo, clearly the impossible has been
achieved.
But is there any adult here to bring proper sobriety to the moment, to actually
remind us that a human being has died, that a tormented soul finally lost his
battle with life and that three innocent children have bee 
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